Screen Queensland Agrees Development Pact With Wattpad

Screen Queensland, the Queensland state’s film support body, has struck a deal with Canada’s Wattpad to develop stories. Wattpad uses global audience insights and machine learning to find and develop hit projects for screens.

Screen Queensland and Wattpad will select up to three successful stories from the Wattpad platform and ask Queensland screen industry creatives to submit their ‘take’. Writers will provide a pitch outlining how they plan to translate the story to screen. The winning three may then move into further development with the input and feedback of the Wattpad platform audience over the following 12 months. The intention is to identify a project to secure marketplace backing and achieve production in Queensland.

Wattpad currently works with companies like Sony Pictures Television, eOne, Erik Feig’s Picturestart, Bavaria Fiction, Mediaset, Lagardere Studios, Wise Entertainment and Turner LatAm’s Particular Crowd. The company has nearly 50 projects in development, including TV and film adaptations of hit stories “The Hound,” “What Happened That Night,” “She’s with Me,” “The Last She,” “Death is My BFF,” “The Numbered, Kairos,” “Along for the Ride,” and “Slow Dancing.”

Another Wattpad story, written by Beth Reekles accumulated 19 million reads and built an international fanbase before being developed for Netflix as “The Kissing Booth.”

Queensland has been home to the production of films including Warner Bros. “Aquaman,” Paramount Pictures’ “Dora and the Lost City of Gold,” and Marvel’s “Thor: Ragnarok” as well as local productions Emmy-Award winning children’s animation “Bluey” by Ludo Studio, political drama series “Total Control”  by Blackfella Films, and “Tidelands” by Hoodlum Entertainment for Netflix.