Tag: Kakao Entertainment

Kakao reportedly shutting down Tapas

The North American webtoon platform will close following the shutdown of Radish, as Kakao scales back its direct platform strategy.

Several Korean news outlets, including MoneyToday, are reporting that entertainment giant Kakao plans to shut down Tapas, the North American webtoon platform it purchased in 2021.

Kakao has not released any details yet on this themselves, either on the Tapas site or in their corporate newsroom, leaving many creators and subscribers with questions. The news follows the shutdown of Radish, a U.S.-based web novel site the company also purchased in 2021.

The shutdown comes as Kakao Entertainment is undertaking a broader restructuring of its story businesses. The company has announced plans to consolidate two of its platforms, KakaoPage and Kakao Webtoon, into a single platform by the end of the year.

I’ll add more details on Kakao’s plans for shutting down the site once they release them. “Developing,” as they say.

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Quick Hits | Behind the scenes at Oni Press

Plus: News on Ron Zimmerman, Paul Coker Jr., Frederik L. Schodt, Ed Brubaker and more.

Publishers | Although it might be hard to believe that there’s anyone left at the Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Company to speak anonymously at this point, Popverse has an interview up with one such staffer, who gives more details on what’s been going on behind the scenes — and offers some context about that not-at-all-thought-out statement that was released on social media. The statement, the anonymous source says, came from parent company Polarity. “They thought it was so good. They did not listen to anyone who told them it was not, and then we reaped the whirlwind of their failure, like pretty much every week this month.”

This unsurprising account by the anonymous staffer follows several rounds of layoffs and departures from the Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Company. Associate publisher Michelle Nguyen left the company voluntarily, following the layoffs of James Lucas Jones, Charlie Chu, Alex Segura, Amanda Meadows, Jasmini Amiri and Henry Barajas in July.

Publishers | Both The Beat and Popverse have reported that webcomics platform Tapas Media has laid off several staff in what’s being described as both a consolidation with sister companies Radish and Wuxiaworld, as well as a shift toward more user-generated content. Bleeding Cool reports that Tapas Media Chief Creative Officer Michele Wells is one of the people impacted by the layoffs. All three companies are owned by Kakao Entertainment, which acquired them in 2021.

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Quick Hits | More details emerge on several Frank Miller Presents projects

Featuring news on Dan DiDio, Christian Cooper, two new comics retailers and more.

Over the weekend, IGN posted a story featuring artwork and quotes from Dan DiDio about Frank Miller Presents, the new initiative he’s been named publisher for. They also revealed the date of publication for Ronin: Book Two, the first project coming out of FMP — Nov. 23. Miller is working with Phillip Tan and Daniel Henriques on the sequel to his 1980s miniseries.

“Frank’s intimately involved in everything going on. The reason why we’re doing Ronin is because it’s never been exploited before,” DiDio told IGN. “We feel that there’s a lot of areas that Frank has story for. And actually, he’s had this story in mind for Ronin: Book Two since the end of the original series 40 years ago. So this is exciting for him to be able to tell that story because he still carries it with him and he’s finally getting it out.”

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Kakao Entertainment buys Tapas Media for $510 million

Founder Chang Kim will continue the day-t0-day management of Tapas.

South Korea-based entertainment company Kakao Entertainment has announced that they’ve acquired the webcomics site Tapas Media for an estimated $510 million.

Chang Kim, who founded Tapas in 2012, will continue to oversee the day-to-day management of Tapas and also become Global Strategy Officers within Kakao Entertainment.

Kakao Entertainment was already a stakeholder of Tapas as of last November, and several of Kakoa’s webcomics are available via Tapas, including A Business Proposal, Space Sweepers, The Uncanny Counter, and Navillera.

“We’re thrilled to join forces with Kakao Entertainment, an entertainment content juggernaut with a massive library of original webtoon IPs, which can be introduced to the US audience through the Tapas platform,” Kim said. “Our team, our unique company culture and our awesome creator community stay the same while we race ahead with the exact same mission but on a much bigger scale.”

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