When it comes to film and TV, love is in the air. Romance-led dramas have moved the dial of late, and Wattpad Webtoon Studios has had a hand in a bunch of them. David Madden and Jason Goldberg from the production arm of the online publishing platform joined Deadline for a romantic chat – or, rather, a chat about romance – and broke down why love always prevails.
With projects such as Sidelined: The QB and Me, Crave’s Heated Rivalry, The Summer I Turned Pretty and Pokeepsie Films’ Culpables trilogy heating up the romance market, demand right now for the genre is heightened, perhaps because audiences are craving certainty in tumultuous times.
“Romance is a key to storytelling and has always been a staple,” says Madden, the Head of Global Entertainment at Wattpad Webtoon Studios and an industry veteran after stints as President of Programming at AMC Networks, Fox Television Studios and Berlanti Productions. “Having said that, in times that are confusing and are somewhat disorienting on a global level, there’s more emphasis on personal fulfilment. Romance never goes away. It’s a key part of our quest for happiness, but I think especially important when it’s harder to know what else to believe in or hold on to.”
Wattpad is the online publishing platform and Webtoon its graphic novel/digital comic counterpart. Readers can comment on individual paragraphs on Wattpad and up to the end of the episode on Webtoon. That feedback is being used to discern how the ebb and flow of a story can be structured as it comes to screen. “We’re making things for fans. They love the twists and turns and we know that as we’re developing, we know what parts of the stories that they like,” Madden says.
Romantic Duo: Love Me Love Me & Kissing Is The Easy Part
Love Me Love Me and Kissing Is The Easy Part dropped on Prime Video and Tubi respectively on February 13, in time for some Valentine’s Day viewing. With Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights (now closing in on $200M worldwide box office) and FX launching Love Story, there was an effort to win Valentine’s Day. Romance, however, is a year-round business. Adapting IP that has already racked up millions of reads — 24M in the case of Love Me Love Me and 32M for Kissing Is The Easy Part – brings built-in fandoms. “The science part of it is the data and looking at the metrics,” Madden says. “It’s hard to ignore when something has a groundswell of readership. At the same time, we all read a lot, and personal judgment comes to be part of it.”
Love Me Love Me follows June after she moves to Italy for a fresh start after her brother’s death. At her new elite school, she is drawn to James, a dangerous bully involved in clandestine MMA fights, but then begins dating his best friend, Will. Kissing Is The Easy Part, meanwhile, follows a romance that blossom after a perfect student is bribed to tutor a rebellious wild child.
Madden breaks down the different shades of romance on offer. “Love Me Love Me is a little more serious and dramatic and Kissing Is The Easy Part is a little more playful, but they’re both expressions of this desire to connect,” Madden says. Underlining that notion that romantic tales can take different forms, there is also a feature adaptation of Love Advice from the Great Duke of Hell in the works at Wattpad Webtoon Studios. It is being worked up with Ron Howard and Brian Grazer’s Imagine Entertainment having garnered a whopping 160M views on Webtoon.
“We have things in every single genre, but I think romance remains king on Wattpad and Webtoon,” says Goldberg, Head of Global Film at Wattpad Webtoon Studios and a former Gunpowder & Sky executive. “Whether the story is fantasy or sci-fi or horror, romance tends to be some sort of element.”
Critics don’t always warm to the resulting series and movies, which are often aimed at a YA audience. Madden says: “The audience for these movies expresses their feelings in a very clear way. We made Sidelined: The QB and Me and the audience came out in enormous numbers. They kind of demanded a sequel, so we made that (Sidelined 2: Intercepted) and they were there for it the second time around. So, those are the reviews, people coming out on mass and saying: ‘This moved me. This made me laugh. This made me hopeful. This made me cry.’”
With two Sidelined movies in the can is there a trilogy in the offing? “Wouldn’t that be nice?” is all Madden will reveal for now.
Best (Romantic) Story Wins
Because it’s open access, a Wattpad hit can come from anywhere. Madden and Goldberg talk about a project they are working on from a female Pakistani writer who goes by Ree in Wattpad. “She wrote a story that was very heavily [influenced by] her own experience in an arranged marriage. She couldn’t get something on the BBC or Netflix, but she wrote this story, it got a readership and we read it and got excited about it and we’re now trying to put it together. Anybody from literally anywhere on this planet, can get these stories on the platform. And truly, the best story wins.”
This is a step outside the traditional worlds of writing and publishing. “We live in a world of screenwriters who are writing on assignment, who can sometimes, for understandable reasons, write to the marketplace,” Madden says. “That’s not what comes out of these platforms.”
Anna Todd was an early Wattpad literary sensation whose work came to screen with After, which became a film franchise starring Hero Fiennes Tiffin. Other projects that spawned multiple instalments include the aforementioned Culpables series on Prime Video, which is now also being remade in English, and the Through My Window trilogy, based on Ariana Godoy’s Wattpad novels for Netflix.
Looking ahead, Chasing Red is currently in production with Wattpad Webtoon and Stampede Ventures. There is also She’s With Me, which is being made with Red Sage, the newly minted label launched by James Farrell, who is attuned to the YA audience as the former head of international content at Maxton Hall and Culpables-era Prime Video.
New Romantic Leads
The new crop of shows can also bolster a new crop of stars. The Culpables’ Nicole Wallace is one who has gone on to achieve worldwide recognition – Culpa Tuya having been named the streamer’s biggest ever international show. She has now signed an overall deal with Amazon MGM Studios.
“I think a lot of buyers were skittish about YA, because they’re like: ‘Oh, who do we cast?’ But we have lots of great relationships with young talent, and young talent loves the types of stories that we do,” says Goldberg. “With Chasing Red, we have Madelaine Petsch and Gavin Casalegno, who are huge draws for people who may not have they even read the Wattpad story, or know nothing about what Wattpad is, but love The Summer I Turned Pretty or Riverdale. Casting is really a key ingredient for us and something that we consider a lot when building things.”
Other upcoming Wattpad Webtoon Studios projects include a movie adaptation of Flor M. Salvador’s ‘Boulevard’ with Sony. The three-book series (a fourth is on the way) have registered 140M Wattpad reads. There is also Perfectos Mentirosos, which racked up over 139M reads on Wattpad with a film adaptation the Alex Mírez-penned story, set in an elite university, coming to Prime Video.
“We’ll definitely have more stories for Valentine’s Days to come,” Goldberg says of Wattpad Webtoon’s contribution to the uptick in romantic fare. Whether it’s films, series or even the burgeoning microdrama space, viewers and the industry have definitely fallen head over heels for romance.
English (US) ·