Kakao Entertainment’s popular sports webtoon “The Gift” is coming to the small screen.

“The Gift,” a webtoon series written and drawn by author J1212, centers around baseball coach Jung Min-yong who has a supernatural power to rate the level and ability of baseball players.

Min-yong starts coaching at a high school and scouts Tae-hoon as a first team pitcher, seeing in him potential to become a great player. The story develops as the players show their dissatisfaction with the newly-appointed coach.

Though high school baseball does not get much attention in South Korea, the players’ journeys, friendships and growth have captivated webtoon readers.

Featuring not only the players, but also their parents’ efforts to support their children and exciting baseball games, many readers hoped to see the series turned into a TV drama or a movie.

Having been published since May 2021, the series has recorded a total of 6.96 million views.

“We have successfully expanded our webtoon IP by successfully adapting webtoons into dramas. The company will continue to discover popular webtoon IP to entertain our readers,” Hwang Hyun-soo, Kakao Entertainment head of story business, said in a press release Monday.

Kakao Entertainment’s webtoon series “Business Proposal,” “Again My Life” and “The Uncanny Counter” are among the hit webtoon-based dramas that went on to become popular both at home and abroad.

By Lee Si-jin (sj_lee@heraldcorp.com)