Hollywood’s First Live-Action Webtoon Series in the Works With Charlize Theron & Hulu

September 24, 2026, 11:00am

Manhwa and webtoons have become absolutely massive within pop culture spaces in the past few years, with series like Lore Olympus, Solo Leveling, and Heartstopper becoming popular enough to receive televisio adaptations as well as merchandise and physical publications of their source materials. That trend seems to be continuing as web-based comics become more mainstream, as Deadline recently reported that Hulu plans to adapt The Mafia Nanny, written by Violet Matter with art by shoo, Drawniels, and Roususu with award-winning actor and producer Charlize Theron acting as executive producer on the series.

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As of writing, Hulu’s adaptation of The Mafia Nanny does not have an official release date, however, it has been confirmed that the series is still in its early development stages with 20th television. There also haven’t been any details released regarding casting announcements for the series.

The Mafia Nanny Has Quickly Become One Of Webtoon’s Top Series

The Mafia Nanny, written by Violet Matter with illustrations by shoo, Drawniels, and Roususu debuted on Webtoon’s web-comic streaming platform in 2023. The series follows Davina Diavolo (aka Davina Bonetti), a graduate from the Elite Nanny Association, which has given her a highly refined skillset in cyber security and hand-to-hand combat. She’s hired as a private caregiver and nanny to the Angelini family — specifically, Gabriel Angelini: a tall, brooding, silver-haired man with connections to a powerful mafia family. Gabriel has enlisted Davina to protect and care for his son, Mikey Angelini. While Davina is supposed to detach herself from her personal feelings and devote everything to obeying her boss, she herself has suffered at the hands of the Angelini family.

The series currently has 115 chapters available to read on Webtoon sprawling three seasons. The Mafia Nanny has been a massive success since it originally launched, earning it over 334.2 million views on the platform, as well as 4.4 million subscribers waiting to see where Davina and Gabriel’s story takes them next. The series also has unique “video episodes” complete with voice acting, with Erin Nicole Lunquist as Davina Diavolo and Nico Fragoso as Gabriel Angelini that can be watched on the series’ main page through Webtoon. The series plays heavily with popular tropes found in webtoons, like the famed slow-burn enemies-to-lovers trope, as well as the male lead Gabriel having a “cold on the outside, soft on the inside” personality.

LINE Webtoon Continues To Dominate The Entertainment Industry

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that manhwa and web-comics originating from Webtoon have garnered enough mainstream appeal to be eyed by major production studios, after all, the landscape created by Webtoon has exploded in popularity. The platform exploded in 2018 when Rachel Smythe began streaming her Lore Olympus, which has garnered over 1.7 billion views and won the Eisner Award for best web-comic three years in a row in 2022, 2023, and 2024. For anime fans, there are two extremely recognizable titles that have blown up thanks to the platform: Tower of God and Solo Leveling, both of which have received anime adaptations from highly respected animation studios.

With so many successful titles under its belt, Webtoon has become the largest digital comic platform in the world, maintaining 145 million active users across 150 different countries. Not to mention, over 27 million comic writers and artists publish their work to the site. Webtoon’s approach to “streaming” and reading chapters makes stories extremely accessible, and its approach to promoting full color works makes every up-and-coming title remarkably eye-catching to potential readers. Seeing that The Mafia Nanny will be making its way to mainstream audiences through Hulu’s new live-action adaptation, it’s likely that the popularity of the platform will only grow more over time.