Open story platform Wattpad has joined forces with Tongal — which links up businesses in need of creative work with writers, directors, and producers — for a new initiative that seeks to highlight crowdsourced storytelling.
As part of their brand new Story To Screen venture, the two companies will produce a digital series for SYFY called Expiration Date — which was conceived on Wattpad and will be brought to life by filmmakers sourced from Tongal. Interested creators are invited to submit treatments for Expiration Date on Tongal today. Three finalists will then receive funding to produce a trailer, with one grand prize winner — selected by SYFY, Wattpad, and Tongal — given more money to create a pilot with a potential series order.
“The partnership between Tongal and Wattpad flips the script on Hollywood by changing the how and who of content creation through our open platforms for talent,” Tongal co-founder and president James DeJulio. “These new global communities are made up of diverse and passionate creators, and now they’re actually developing the shows they want to watch.”
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Expiration Date, which was written by Mikaela Bender, is one of the most popular sci-fi stories to hit Wattpad in recent years, with more than 16 million reads to date. The book is set in a future world where a mysterious ‘Society’ knows the dates of citizens’ deaths. But when protagonist Iris Levine — a 19-year-old orphan — is saved by a mysterious man on her ‘expiration date’, she becomes the society’s biggest threat.
This isn’t the first collaboration between Wattpad and Tongal. In 2017, the two companies developed a series called Cupid’s Match for CW Seed — the network’s digital arm. The pilot for Cupid’s Match became the second most-watched video on the CW Seed YouTube channel.
