Highlights
- The live-action One Piece adaptation has received positive fanfare and critical reviews, earning praise from the creator himself.
- Scripts for a potential second season are ready, but the timeline for development depends on the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike.
- Netflix has shown support for the series and it’s expected to be renewed based on its success and exceeding expectations.
Netflix’s live-action One Piece adaptation received an encouraging season 2 update from a producer.
Netflix’s One Piece is based on the highly successful Shonen manga of the same name from creator Eiichiro Oda, which is published in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump and tells the story of Monkey D. Luffy, a young boy who dreams of finding the eponymous treasure known as the One Piece and becoming the King of the Pirates in a world ruled by a corrupt central World Government that enforces its will through its Navy’s Marines. This success led to the announcement of the live-action adaptation for Netflix, which was met with some apprehension, as Netlix’s recently failed attempt at a live-action Cowboy Bebop was seen by many to not bode well for the One Piece adaptation.
Despite this, the live-action One Piece series debuted to overwhelmingly positive fanfare and critical reviews. It even earned specially delivered praise from One Piece creator Oda for its stellar casting and appreciable attention to detail in adapting the work. With the first season’s success, the CEO of the live-action One Piece‘s production company, Tomorrow Studios, Marty Adelstein, spoke to Variety to announce the progress on a potential second season. “We’ve got scripts ready,” the executive assured fans, with company president Becky Clements further specifying a timeline for the second season’s development based on the material, saying, “Realistically, hopefully, a year away, if we move very quickly, and that is a possibility. Somewhere between a year and 18 months, we could be ready for air.”
The timeline depends on the ongoing SAG-AFTRA strike, which recently set its sights on video game companies. On the subject of how likely Netflix is to renew Once Piece for a second season, Clements also had some encouraging news to share about the company’s attitude towards the project. “They keep it, as you know, close to the vest until post-launch,” Clements admitted. “But with Netflix’s support of the title, we expected it to be number one, and we sensed their research and algorithms probably saw the possibility for that. But in our subsequent calls post-launch, we have been told that we have exceeded expectations, which is also fantastic.”
While initially viewed by many as being as misguided as Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation, One Piece has made a strong case for renewal, With Oda working hand in hand with showrunners Matt Owens and Steven Maeda to ensure that the changes made to the source material don’t strip away the heart of the series, even the much more difficult task of adapting the ambitious story arcs and characters that lay ahead of the production team seems doable.
One Piece has inadvertently proven that the hate for prior Western anime adaptations was justified, which is a double-edged blade for the company behind this new, triumphant adaptation and some of the most well-loathed previous attempts at the conversion. Now that Netflix has seemingly cracked the code, seeing what else comes out of the One Piece series beyond its renewal will be interesting.
The live-action adaptation of One Piece is available for streaming on Netflix.
Source: Variety