Webtoon 'Solo Leveling' to be made into a film

A teaser image of the ″Solo Leveling″ animation film to be released in 2023 [KAKAO ENTERTAINMENT]

Kakao Entertainment will turn its popular webtoon “Solo Leveling” into an animated film with Japanese production studio A-1 Pictures, the company announced Monday.

“Solo Leveling” is a webtoon series that has over 14.2 billion views on Kakao’s webtoon platforms since starting in 2018. It was based on a web novel series with the same title, written by Chugong and adapted into a webtoon by h-goon and DUBU.

It is a fantasy action story in a world that has been disrupted by monsters from a different realm. The protagonist Sung Jin-woo, a weak hunter killed by a monster, is reincarnated as the strongest hunter. The series has been popular in Japan, Thailand and the United States, according to Kakao Entertainment.

A-1 Pictures is a Japanese animation studio that released well-known flicks including “Sword Art Online,” “The Seven Deadly Sins,” “Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day, Erased,” and “Your Lie in April.”

The “Solo Leveling” film will be released in 2023. The language used has not been decided yet.

“If someone told me that this web novel would become an animation when I first started writing it six years ago, I wouldn’t have believed them,” said author Chugong. “I feel so excited about this, and I can’t wait to see Sung Jin-woo and his friends come to life in the animation.”

BY YOON SO-YEON [yoon.soyeon@joongang.co.kr]