US growth is priority number one for WEBTOON Entertainment—and the outlook on achieving this goal is looking brighter than ever, with a family media giant along for the ride. 

In August, news broke of a multi-year licensing deal that will add roughly 100 Disney titles (formatted for vertical scrolling) to the webcomics company’s eponymous platform—which has around 155 million global monthly active users. This evolved into a much broader partnership a month later, when the Mouse House bought a 2% equity interest in WEBTOON and agreed to collaborate on building a new dedicated digital comics service. 

The first deal is all about giving Disney’s entertainment brands a vertical-scroll presence on WEBTOON—not just reformatting older comics for a vertical experience, but also creating brand-new WEBTOON series based on characters from the studio’s vault. Wasting no time, the partners launched five formatted titles last year, including Amazing Spider-Man and Disney As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale. 

“We are actively working with Disney to identify which kinds of IPs are best suited for new original storylines,” says Yongsoo Kim, WEBTOON’s chief strategy officer and head of global. The two companies are exploring which characters are most likely to capture younger demos, as well as existing franchise worlds that offer fresh and unexplored storylines. 

In the second facet of the partnership, the upcoming Disney service provides another big opportunity for WEBTOON to bring its technical know-how to the table. Although Disney has a dedicated superhero-focused platform in Marvel Unlimited, it has never had a single online destination housing all kinds of Disney comic content. 

WEBTOON will build and operate this new platform, which will contain a whopping 35,000 archive comics from many of the studio’s marquee brands—Pixar, Disney, Marvel, Star Wars and 20th Century. 

This Disney team-up has been brewing since WEBTOON launched its Nasdaq IPO in summer 2024. “Being listed in the US [is tied into our strategy] to grow in this market,” says Kim, who moved stateside from South Korea last year to help support these regional growth efforts. “And, of course, it was really helpful for increasing our brand awareness, hiring and partnerships.”

WEBTOON met with Disney not long after the IPO to discuss a variety of potential collaborations and mutual benefits. “They want their IPs to reach larger young audiences [in a new format], and we want to have great content,” says Kim, adding that the new Disney service will also carry some non-Disney original comics from the WEBTOON platform. 

“It’s a kind of sampling feature for Disney fans,” he says—a gateway for introducing comic book readers who haven’t yet ventured beyond the Mouse House IPs. But there’s also plenty of groundwork being laid to strengthen interest from webcomic newbies and even fans who aren’t necessarily comic book readers (or at least not yet). 

One such strategy focuses on Disney+ streaming subscribers, who will have free access to a few curated titles from the digital comics app. It’s a new kind of added-value proposition for Disney+, offering more lore and deeper stories about the characters that viewers already know and love. Even the Marvel Unlimited app hasn’t opened up its content without a subscription, so this is a unique move that could increase sign-ups on the upcoming Disney comics service. 

On the WEBTOON platform, the vertical content could help drive more tween and teen engagement, in particular. In a move to make the platform more accessible for these younger users, WEBTOON introduced a new “video episodes” feature to its platform last fall. Video episodes allow readers to switch to a more immersive experience that adds sounds, voice acting and some dynamic motion to the comic (such as sound and light effects, speech bubbles and characters moving around). 

Making comics watchable increases their appeal for those who have grown up in the TikTok age. “We’re always thinking of ways we can capture more of that younger generation. And we know some of them prefer watching videos,” Kim explains. Users can also manually adjust the speed of these episodes based on the pacing they like best. 

Kim says it’s too early to explore whether and how this video episodes feature could roll out on the Disney service, though he notes that the partners are in talks to have “advanced” features in the service. 

WEBTOON is bringing some well-earned product and operation expertise to the table, harnessed from years of perfecting its own hub. For example, it already understands the importance of speedy content discovery (especially for an activity like reading, which can be more time-consuming). 

“On WEBTOON, we built an AI-based engine that recommends titles for users based on a minimal reading history. We really want to have that strong personalized curation system, so the Disney comics app will implement a similar recommendation engine,” notes Kim, adding that this extra guidance will come in handy, especially for [a brand with] so many characters and worlds—some users might be a bit overwhelmed. 

To support its continued push in the US, WEBTOON will focus on ramping up partnerships to bring in more recognizable IPs—building on deals it signed last year with publishers Dark Horse Comics, IDW and BOOM! Studios. 

Maintaining its robust local creator ecosystem is also greatly important to Kim. “Whenever you look at the WEBTOON top 10 trending list, the first five titles always stem from local creators.” 

Meanwhile, Hollywood is also tapping into the power of the vertical scroll, with Warner Bros. Animation (Bugs Bunny Builders) finalizing a deal with WEBTOON in November, not long after Disney. The studio will co-produce a total of 10 animated projects based on popular WEBTOON comics, including Elf & Warrior, Down to Earth, The Stellar Swordmaster and Hardcore Leveling Warrior. 

“Our core mission is [to be] a platform for creators and fans,” says Kim. “Whether it’s WEBTOON original content or the IPs licensed from our partners, we want to deliver great content for our fandom.”

This story originally appeared in Kidscreen‘s Q1 2026 magazine issue.