‘One Piece’ Producers On Winning Over Manga Fans, Finding Luffy & Six-Year Plan For Hit Netflix Series
13.09.2023 - 14:55
/ deadline.com
One Piece, the live-action adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s ongoing best-selling manga, just wrapped its second week at No. 1 in Netflix’s Top 10 with another dominating performance internationally. And, in what is becoming a right of passage for every series that hits it big with young adults these days (like Netflix’s Wednesday), One Piece sparked a TikTok craze with tributes to its demented villain Buggy.
In an interview with Deadline, One Piece executive producers, Tomorrow Studios’ Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements, spoke about how the tide turned on TikTok, with skeptical fans of the manga and anime series embracing the live-action adaptation of the story about a young man and his pirate crew’s search for the fabled “One Piece” treasure.
“Both Becky and I have been involved in a lot of successful shows. But in your career, you dream about one like this,” Adelstein said. “And if you’re lucky you get one like this that resonates so large, and there’s such awareness of and people have a love of the source material.”
For Tomorrow Studios, One Piece was a followup to another live-action Netflix series based on a beloved anime, Cowboy Bebop, which didn’t go beyond one season. Adelstein and Clements shared lessons they learned on that show that they applied to One Piece, spoke about assembling the young cast and particularly the expensive talent search for the lead role of Luffy, which went to Mexican actor Iñaki Godoy (Who Killed Sara?), and revealed how Prison Break, a series Adelstein once executive produced, helped him land the rights to Once Piece.
The two veteran TV producers also discussed making use of pirate ships originally built for Starz’s Black Sails in South Africa, shared their favorite moments from Season