Jun. 22, 2018 "Wattpad eyes more adaptations after success of Netflix's The Kissing Booth": Today I found this article by Aleksandra Sagan in the Globe and Mail:
Netflix’s “The Kissing Booth” may have an approval rating of under 20 per cent from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, but it’s still one of the most popular movies in the world right now.
The teenage romantic comedy is the latest in a string of successful onscreen adaptations from self-published writers on Wattpad, a website where aspiring novelists can share their books, often one chapter at a time.
The Toronto-based company wants to branch out beyond e-books and believes it can tap into loyal fanbases and a trove of user data to help movie and TV producers discover the next big hit.
“I think it is an exceptionally unique time in entertainment,” said Aron Levitz, head of Wattpad Studios, a roughly two-year-old division that is responsible for taking stories from the website and turning them into adaptations for movies, film, TV, games and any other possible avenue.
He sees opportunity in a world where big budget movies expected to be box office hits fail to turn significant profits, and where television networks cancel many shows after a one-year run — leaving studios with scarce returns on big investments. Streaming services like Netflix and YouTube have also been pumping out original content to lure traditional movie and TV audiences.
Wattpad determined it could help producers avoid duds by scouring readership data to determine popular texts.
“It isn’t using data at any one point in the process,” said Levitz. “It’s actually using it continually.”
In May, the company announced Hulu picked up supernatural thriller “Light as a Feather” for a straight-to-series deal, and Sony Pictures Television acquired the rights to “Death is my BFF.”
Wattpad looks at both what readers are reading and writers are writing from millions of subgenres in order to select a story it believes will resonate.
Once a story is selected, the company continues to use data to develop it into marketable content. They may, for example, use reader comments on specific lines or sections of text and opt to eliminate a secondary character from a script if enough readers indicate they didn’t love that person.
The company profits as a producer, Levitz said, while writers earn money selling the rights to their text. He did not provide further details and, as Wattpad is a private company, would not say how much of their revenue stems from the studio arm.
Wattpad relies on its data to help companies market the projects and reach that promised built-in audience of readers before an adaptation is released to help ensure its success.
“It means we can use that data to motivate audiences to go, go to box offices, turn on streaming services or go to bookstores,” said Levitz.
The company ran a contest that asked writers to submit their real-life teenage love stories to re-energize “The Kissing Booth” fans who were first introduced to the then 15-year-old author’s tale in 2011.
After it’s Netflix premiere date, “The Kissing Booth” rose to one of the top 10 most popular movies in the world, according to movie site IMDB. It’s now sitting at the no. 12 spot.
Isabelle Ronin, a 31-year-old author who turned her self-published Wattpad writing into a book deal, was thrilled to see the success of “The Kissing Booth” and excited by how many Wattpad stories are being turned into movies and TV shows. She’s hopeful an opportunity will emerge for her too.
“Oh my god, I hope so,” she said. “I hope so.”
She self-published “Chasing Red,” which has been read about 187 million times, on the website in 2014.
She landed a publishing deal and turned her romance novel about a college student who finds herself suddenly homeless and the basketball player who offers her a place to stay into two books, “Chasing Red” and “Always Red.”
Wattpad increasingly wants to showcase stories like Ronin’s on other platforms. The company is working to expand its studio operations. It grew its L.A. and Asia teams this year.
“Wattpad sees the studio business as an important part and cornerstone of strategy,” Levitz said.
That strategy, which Wattpad says can help traditional media in an age of disruption, is also helping to fuel the changes as the self-publishing platform sells content to alternative media companies, like Netflix.
YouTube is also working to tap into undiscovered talent and showcase it on its website, adding more pressure on traditional studios.
The video-sharing site recently launched its Premium service, formerly known as YouTube Red, in 17 countries. Premium gives watchers access to its music-streaming service and original shows content for a monthly fee.
While some of their original productions rely on professional actors, others take YouTube personalities with an established audience and a good idea to create premium subscriber content, said Adam Smith, vice-president of product for YouTube Music and Premium.
Joey Graceffa, for example, hosts “Escape The Night” — a mystery series in its third season and available to watch with a YouTube Premium subscription. He’s built up more than 11 million followers across two channels.
YouTube earns revenue from the ads played before the creator’s videos and subscription fees, said Smith. YouTubers earn a share from both sources as well.
“It’s something we do intend to continue to invest into.”
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/article-wattpad-eyes-more-adaptations-after-success-of-the-kissing-booth-on/
Aug. 7, 2018 "The old kiss principle": Today I found this article by Alice Vincent in the Edmonton Journal:
When Beth Reekles embarked upon a graduate trainee scheme at an IT company in Swindon last September, her new colleagues had no idea she was the author of three published novels.
Nor did they know that the 23-year-old had sold the film rights to her first book, a high school romance called The Kissing Booth, to the streaming giant Netflix.
And neither Reekles herself nor her colleagues could have guessed that, come summer 2018, that film would be one of the most surprising hits of the year.
“I don’t tend to bring it up,” Reekles says matter-of-factly.
Among a certain demographic, Reekles, from Newport, South Wales, is not only well known, she is verging on J.K. Rowling-levels of celebrity. The Kissing Booth has been read more than 19 million times on Wattpad, a story sharing app beloved by teenagers and twentysomethings.
Instagram and Tumblr are awash with memes, quotes and stills from the film and book, generated and disseminated by her fan club, the Kissquad. And Noah Flynn, the unfeasibly good-looking bad boy at the heart of the novel, has become the YouTube generation’s Mr. Darcy.
Netflix doesn’t release streaming figures, but Ted Sarandos, its chief content officer, has called it “one of the most-watched movies in the world” and the company has revealed that, of those who have watched The Kissing Booth, a third have seen it more than once — a rate 30 per cent higher than normal.
In the days after its release in May, it was the fourth most popular film in the world, according to votes registered on the website IMDb. And its stars, Joey King and Jacob Elordi, leaped from adolescent nobodies to the sixth most popular actress and No. 1 actor in the world — again, as voted by IMDb users. To the delight of their fans, the pair are dating offscreen, too.
If you’ve not heard of it, it’s probably because you’re over 20. Even Ian Bricke, Netflix’s director of independent film, has admitted they “weren’t aggressively marketing the film.” Instead, they relied on the recommendations of teenage social media users, who can be very persuasive indeed.
The Kissing Booth story is simple: Elle (King) and Lee (Joel Courtney) are best friends who were born on the same day, in the same hospital in Los Angeles. Their firm friendship survives the death of Elle’s mother from cancer and is based on a strict set of rules, such as “Never share our secrets with anyone else” and “Always be happy for your bestie’s successes.”
But trouble arises when Elle kisses Lee’s motorcycle-riding brother Noah (Elordi) at a school fundraiser (in the titular kissing booth) and she starts to contemplate breaking rule No. 9: “Relatives of your best friend are totally off-limits.”
If it sounds rather clichéd, it might be because that was exactly what the then-15-year-old Reekles was aiming for when she wrote it.
Surrounded by a deluge of Twilight-inspired fictional werewolves and vampires, Reekles fashioned her own high school romance and set it in California — where she is still yet to go.
The reason for the U.S. setting, Reekles says, was simply that she figured most young readers, wherever they lived in the world, would be familiar with the U.S. school system “because of movies like Mean Girls and shows like Gossip Girl.”
Reekles, the daughter of a former HR manager and IT professional, has been writing stories since she was six, but indulged in the pursuit more seriously when her parents gave her an old laptop at the start of secondary school.
A friend recommended her to Wattpad. The platform, founded in 2006, contains millions of stories by aspiring writers that can be read for free. Reekles used it to self-publish The Kissing Booth — uploading the story in serial form.
The first chapter quickly clocked up 50,000 “reads” and 18 months later, Reekles was approached by a children’s imprint of Penguin Random House with a three-book publishing deal.
The Kissing Booth emerged as a paperback in 2013 and, later that year, Reekles went to university to study physics.
While her classmates were still working out which clubs and societies to join, Reekles was having her book turned into a movie.
The finished product harks back to teen movie classics of the 1980s and ’90s. Director Vince Marcello even cast Molly Ringwald (famous for the 1985 film The Breakfast Club) as Noah and Lee’s mother, and featured The Breakfast Club anthem Don’t You (Forget About Me) in a prom scene. Reekles says the film is “cheesy and amazing.”
It resonates with teenagers for the same reason her book did: “I was 15 when I wrote it, and that’s exactly what I wanted to read when I was that age.”
The critics are rather less convinced. The Kissing Booth has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 13 per cent (the audience score is 68 per cent).
Its naysayers say the film’s plot is outdated, sexist and problematic — mostly because of the violent and controlling nature of “misunderstood” heartthrob Noah, although the frequency with which Elle is caught in her underwear doesn’t help.
Dana Schwartz of Entertainment Weekly called it “the most weirdly male-gazy teenage rom-com I’ve ever seen.”
“I ignore it, mostly,” Reekles says of the backlash. “I’m not going to feed the troll. I think people are always going to find fault with it.”
Plus, she says, The Kissing Booth does have “a really healthy attitude toward sex. Elle and Noah’s relationship is very consensual and positive.”
Reekles is bombarded daily on social media by requests for a sequel (The Kissing Booth finishes on a tantalizing cliffhanger). “There are so many people clamouring for it that I’m not going to make empty promises,” she says firmly.
Has her literary success made her rich? Reekles won’t say, although, in a tweet earlier this month she wrote: “Authors don’t earn as much money as you think they do.”
What’s more, the physics graduate is still doing her day job in IT. “I really like my job,” she says.
“I have no plans to leave it. I want to do both (IT and writing) so I’ll leave it a few years and see how it pans out.” If the past six years are anything to go by, IT’s loss could soon be teen fiction’s gain.
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/ottawa-citizen/20180807/282127817297680
