Netflix Is Making A Live-Action ‘One Piece’ TV Show [Updated]
Update:Deadlinereports that Netflix has ordered ten episodes ofOne Piece, withSteven Maeda(Lost, The X-Files) serving as the writer, showrunner, and executive producer andMatt Owens(Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Luke Cage) on board as a writer/executive producer. It’ll be a co-production between Netflix and Tomorrow Studios, and another instance in which those companies pair to adapt a beloved anime series as a live-action series following their work on the upcomingCowboy Bebop. Our original article from 2017 continues below.One Pieceis one of the most popular — and baffling — anime staples in Japan. While the wacky, surreal pirate romp hasn’t quite accumulated the same amount of fervor over in the United States as it has in Japan, it’s still one of the most well known anime properties today. And it’sstill going, 20 years after its inception. That’s unheard of, even in the anime world. It can be chocked up to just how obsessed Japan is withOne Piece— when I went to Japan last year, there were entire stores dedicated just toOne Piece.Not anime,One Piece. It’s a phenomenon all on its own.
So for a show of such pop culture impact asOne Piece, the only logical next step is…an American TV series?
According to reports fromYahoo! Japan(h/tComicbook.com),One PiececreatorEiichiro Odahas confirmed that his beloved series will be getting a live-action television adaptation by Hollywood in conjunction with its 20th anniversary.
Tomorrow Studios (the studio known forPrison Break) will oversee the project whileMarty Adelstein, the executive producer onPrison Break, will be in-charge of theOne Pieceseries.
This adaptation is just the latest symptom of anime fever that Hollywood has caught, following the disastrousGhost in the Shelladaptation starring Scarlett Johansson, and Adam Wingard’s upcomingDeath Notemovie on Netflix. There have also been reports floating around ofAkiraandCowboy Bebopadaptations.
Hollywood doesn’t have a great track record with adapting anime into movies. The films are often critically panned, and not just because of recent outcries over whitewashing. It may simply be hard to adapt the sometimes boundary-pushing, often just plain strange, stories for the big or small screen.
AndOne Pieceis the strangest of them all. Following a pirate who can stretch his limbs like rubber,One Pieceis surreal, weird, and a little bit disturbing. I haven’t seen all of the episodes ofOne Piece— with more than 800 of them, who could? — but they kind of play like acid-induced fever dreams. But it also may be because I only ever caught them on Adult Swim at 1 in the morning.
Here’s the Viz Media synopsis for theOne Piecemanga below:
“As a child, Monkey D. Luffy dreamed of becoming King of the Pirates. But his life changed when he accidentally gained the power to stretch like rubber—at the cost of never being able to swim again! Years later, Luffy sets off in search of the One Piece, said to be the greatest treasure in the world…”
What do you think of aOne Piecelive-action TV series? And do you think it could run for as long as its anime predecessor?
