Innovative IP Platforms Bring New Voices To The Industry

Film London’s exclusive IP Market event UPstream returns online on February 2nd 2021 after last year’s inaugural success, with Film London pleased to announce a Keynote interview with global entertainment company and the world’s leading social storytelling platform Wattpad.

Launched last year, UPstream is an innovative and exclusive Market for Intellectual Property (IP) holders with hand-selected exciting, early stage projects deriving from various creative cultivators such as The Young Vic, Talawa, the world of podcasts, literature and graphic novels. The event connects them with UK Film and TV production companies, sales agents and publishers for development and adaptation to TV drama and/or feature film.

Wattpad is a social storytelling platform and entertainment company, connecting a global community of over 90 million readers and writers with original stories from around the world. Users spend over 23 billion minutes a month engaged in the nearly one billion story uploads on the platform. Working with various industry heavyweights as partners, Wattpad develops these stories into various multi-medias. Wattpad’s success stories include the global book and film sensations After and After We Collided, and Hulu’s Light as a Feather. The international hit The Kissing Booth, from Netflix and Komixx Entertainment, also started on Wattpad, where it gained 19 million reads and a global fan base before being adapted for screens.

The company has selected three of its top stories for inclusion at the market, including Taylor Hale’s (@solacing) Summer I Drowned. The story has accumulated more than 1.6 million reads on Wattpad, and has been published by Wattpad Books in North America and Penguin Random House UK.

Head of Wattpad Studios, Aron Levitz will join Film London CEO, Adrian Wootton, for an opening Q&A focusing on the growth of the company, the new voices it represents, the impressive readership and the platforms’ loyal community.

Last year’s event offered a new path for the industry, giving the unique opportunity for buyers to hear about the breadth of untapped talent and content in the capital, and evaluate business models. A 2019 attendee, said:

“An innovative and forward-thinking event which really captures the direction the audiovisual sector is taking and which positively impacted the way in which we think about our business."

Various leading companies are set to attend this year, including STUDIOCANAL, All3Media and Bankside.

UPstream will take place online February 2nd 2021, enabling for a wider international roster of IP holders presenting projects.