WEBTOON Entertainment CEO & Founder Junkoo Kim Named to Bloomberg Businessweek's Screentime Ones to Watch List
The recognition follows WEBTOON Entertainment’s IPO earlier this year and the growing influence of WEBTOON content in entertainment and pop culture
LOS ANGELES AND SEOUL - WEBTOON Entertainment Founder & CEO Junkoo Kim has been named to Bloomberg Businessweek’s prestigious Screentime Ones to Watch List for 2024. As a visionary business leader and innovator whose contributions have defined pop culture in 2024, Kim has been recognized among some of the world’s most influential Media & Entertainment business and creative leaders on Bloomberg Businessweek's Screentime Ones to Watch List.
Kim joins Media & Entertainment leaders like Anjali Sud, CEO of Tubi, and pop sensations like Chappell Roan and Reneé Rapp on the 2024 list. Previous Ones to Watch include James Gunn (Co-CEO of DC Studios), visual artist Buck Ellison, and recording artist Ice Spice, among others.
Kim’s recognition comes after WEBTOON’s high-profile IPO in June 2024 which introduced the company’s global influence to investors around the world. Founded in 2005, Kim first developed WEBTOON as a way to help comic Creators reach new fans. WEBTOON’s innovation, the mobile vertical-scroll webcomic experience, became a hit among Creators and fans around the world, helping the comic industry transition to the digital era and reach a new generation of digital-native fans. Since then, WEBTOON’s Creator Economy has provided an unmatched economic opportunity and value proposition for Creators around the world, paying out $2.8B to Creators between 2017 - 2023.
The company has built an expansive global IP & Creator Ecosystem of aligned companies and platforms spanning webcomics, webnovels, TV, film, publishing, merch and more. With two studios--Wattpad WEBTOON Studios in Hollywood and Studio N in Korea--WEBTOON’s entertainment business has produced a string of streaming hits, while developing new projects with some of the most exciting names in Hollywood. Recent hits include Netflix projects like Studio N produced The 8 Show and Sweet Home, and Wattpad WEBTOON Studios’ Through My Window, among others.
Upcoming projects include Sidelined: The QB and Me, a Tubi Original based on the Wattpad story of the same name, starring TikTok superstar Noah Beck alongside James Van Der Beek; Death of a Pop Star, with Oscar-winner Diablo Cody; Love Advice from the Great Duke of Hell, with Ron Howard's Imagine Entertainment; and Freaking Romance, with Skybound Entertainment, among many others.
The full Screentime Ones to Watch list will be published in the October 2024 issue of Bloomberg Businessweek. Kim will also appear at Bloomberg’s 2024 Screentime event in LA on October 9 - 10.