The Super Popular “Let’s Play” Webcomic is Coming to TV

The latest webcomic to leap to television is Let’s Play, and I could not be more excited about this news! Allnighter announced earlier this week that they are partnering with creator Leeanne M. Krecic to bring a Let’s Play live-action series to life. This endearing, ensemble Gen-Z rom-com is just what the geek community needs.

While the adaptation does not yet have a showrunner attached, the Let’s Play live-action series will be executive produced by Allnighter partners Amanda Kruse, Dinesh Shamdasani, and Hunter Gorinson alongside Krecic and Tom Akel. Kruse, Shamdasani, and Gorinson are all former senior executives at Hivemind, the production company behind Netflix’s The Witcher.

Let’s Play is one of the first Webtoons that I recommended more than two years ago, after I discovered the series thanks to a New York Comic Con panel. Launched in 2016 with a subscriber base of more than 3.8 million weekly readers, the highly-successful Webtoon is very female-driven, exploring, embracing, and satirizing gaming culture while also delving in to topics like anxiety, depression, trauma, and sexual orientation.

The Eisner-nominated comic has a legion of dedicated fans of various genres and, thanks to two blockbuster crowdfunding campaigns that rank among the 20 most successful comic Kickstarters of all time, has made the jump to print by Rocketship Entertainment. But it is still available to read for free on the Webtoon website or app. It is currently on hiatus but will return later this year.

“I created Let’s Play because I was looking for characters like me – die-hard gamers, heartfelt romantics, and young women with dreams of success on their own terms – but couldn’t find them represented anywhere in the pop culture of the moment. So, I decided that was a story that I would have to tell for myself,” said LET’S PLAY creator Leeanne M. Krecic. “On its surface, Let’s Play is a love triangle, but it’s also a contemporary, emotionally sophisticated reinvention of the form – one that soon will allow young women to see the loves, aspirations, and setbacks of people like themselves celebrated on screen at long last.”

“Let’s Play has an incredible fanbase of ardent readers – the vast majority of them, young women – who have found within it exactly what Leeanne hoped to create: a community. I am one of them myself and discovering LET’S PLAY was a revelation,” said Allnighter co-founder and producer Amanda Kruse. “It’s an absolute honor to play a role in helping bring this story to screen.”

Let’s Play has some of the most relatable representations of mental illness that I think I’ve ever seen, as well as a diverse cast of characters that prove geeks and gamers come from all walks of life, not just the stereotypical representations we’ve seen in other works of media.

The Let’s Play live-action series is the latest in a long line of comics-to-TV projects from Allnighter, which is currently working on a film version of Image Comics’ The Strange Talent of Luther Strode and series of Image Comics’ Gideon Falls and EC Comics’ Weird Fantasy. The company most recently produced Sony Pictures’ Bloodshot, based on the Valiant Entertainment series and starring Vin Diesel and Guy Pearce.

Other Webtoons (that I have read) that have been adapted (or optioned to be adapted) to other mediums include Lore Olympus and True Beauty.

Author: Jamie Sugah

Jamie has a BA in English with a focus in creative writing from The Ohio State University. She self-published her first novel, The Perils of Long Hair on a Windy Day, which is available through Amazon. She is currently an archivist and lives in New York City with her demon ninja vampire cat. She covers television, books, movies, anime, and conventions in the NYC area.

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