Allnighter to Bring Online Comic Phenomenon LET'S PLAY to Television

LOS ANGELES, May 6, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Allnighter today announced that it will be bringing the massively popular, romantic comedy webcomic, LET'S PLAY, and its devoted, multimillion-strong weekly readership to television as a live-action series in partnership with creator Leeanne M. Krecic. Allnighter partners Amanda Kruse, Dinesh Shamdasani, and Hunter Gorinson will executive produce the series alongside Krecic and Tom Akel. The team will soon be approaching high-profile showrunner talent for the adaptation.

The female-driven series – which embraces, explores, and satirizes gaming culture through the eyes of a 20-something, female video game developer – launched as an online webcomic serial in 2016 on WEBTOON, the largest digital comics platform in the world. It quickly took on a life of its own, amassing a subscriber base of more than 3.8 million weekly readers – a staggering statistic that makes it not only one of the most successful series in the history of the WEBTOON platform, but one of the most widely read serialized comic books anywhere in the Western world today. With a legion of dedicated fans that spans the gaming, comics, and romantic fiction communities and a long list of critical accolades (including a 2019 Eisner Award nomination), LET'S PLAY has also successfully migrated into print through Rocketship Entertainment with two blockbuster crowdfunding campaigns that have amassed nearly $1 million in contributions and that currently rank amongst the 20 most successful comics Kickstarters of all time.

The comic series will return for its highly anticipated third "season" later in 2021 and can be read online at webtoons.com and in the WEBTOON app.

A quintessential romantic comedy in the vein of NEW GIRL and FRIENDS for the generation raised on YouTube and Twitch, LET'S PLAY follows Sam – an aspiring game developer who sacrificed a social life to pour her heart and soul into her first game. But when the product of Sam's passion – a lovingly constructed RPG called Ruminate – gets skewered by an enigmatic game reviewer only known by the online handle "Marshall Law," the personal and professional fallout is swift and brutal. Things get even more complicated when Sam discovers that her new next-door neighbor is none other than Marshall in the flesh – and that, together, they're about to become opposing players in the game of love and life.

"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."

Allnighter was founded in 2020 by Dinesh Shamdasani, Amanda Kruse, and Hunter Gorinson. With partners whose backgrounds straddle film and television, comic book publishing, and game development, Allnighter is uniquely suited to uniting world-class creative talent and industry-leading properties from the worlds of cult genre fiction, comedy, comics and graphic novels, video games, tabletop games, manga and anime, and more. The company most recently produced BLOODSHOT, the Sony Pictures feature film starring Vin Diesel and Guy Pearce based on the blockbuster comic book series from Valiant Entertainment. Shamdasani previously led Valiant – which holds the largest independently owned library of comic book content in entertainment – as CEO & Chief Creative Officer from the company's successful relaunch through Valiant's high-profile sale in 2018.

LET'S PLAY marks a sizable new addition to Allnighter's slate of upcoming film and television projects, which also includes THE STRANGE TALENT OF LUTHER STRODE, a feature film based on the hit Image Comics action-horror trilogy by creators Justin Jordan & Tradd Moore; GIDEON FALLS, a television adaptation of the Eisner Award-winning Image Comics series by creators Jeff Lemire & Andrea Sorrentino, in partnership with James Wan's Atomic Monster and Hivemind; and WEIRD FANTASY, a new series based on the subversive science-fiction stories of EC Comics; among many others.

Allnighter is represented by UTA. Visit them online at TeamAllnighter.com. Leeanne M. Krecic is represented by Tom Akel of Akel Entertainment and Matt Sugarman of Weintraub Tobin.

SOURCE Allnighter