‘One Piece’ Showrunner Teases That Smoking Mid-Credits Scene Character and Season 2 Plans

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “The Recruit” producer P3 Media has scored a seven-figure investment from Ready Entertainment, a company led by Martin Luther King Jr.’s daughter, Bernice A. King, and Ashley Bell.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor What are the most powerful franchises in TV, film and games? Fandom, which touts itself as the world’s biggest wiki platform for entertainment and gaming fans, has cooked up a proprietary metric that it claims answers the question. The company, as part of its fifth annual “Inside Fandom” study, announced the new metric — the Franchise Factor Score, which it calls “a single, definitive metric that looks beyond the financials to define the driving forces behind entertainment and gaming franchise success.” Star Wars, with a score of 100, is No.

One Piece held onto the treasured top spot among Netflix’s English-language TV series for the week of September 11 to 17.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Amazon is taking back to school shopping to a whole new level with a virtual experience to promote the Sept. 29 debut of “The Boys” college spinoff “Gen V.” On Tuesday, the e-commerce giant launched GodolkinUniversity.com, a “Gen V”-themed website that includes an online campus tour for the show’s fictional superhero college, Godolkin University, that gives users the chance to purchase 150 items from Amazon.com through the company’s first-ever “title-themed virtual store.” The “Gen V” tie-in website allows you to explore the campus, including the campus store, and gives you multiple opportunities to purchase Godolkin University merchandise through the Amazon website, as well as standard dorm room supplies already available on Amazon.

Netflix has picked up a second season of One Piece, the live-action adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s best-selling manga.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer CBS Studios has suspended term deals with talkshow star Phil “Dr. Phil” McGraw, BET+’s “Kingdom Business” producer DeVon Franklin and “Nancy Drew” executive producer Lis Rowinski due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America (WGA) strike. Representatives for CBS Studios declined to comment on the suspension of these deals Monday.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Author Rebecca Yarros’s romance-fantasy series “Fourth Wing” has had a chokehold on TikTok’s reader community #BookTok this summer. That heat eventually was reflected on the The New York Times bestseller list — a place where many a viral hit goes after influencers and fans elevate its popularity beyond the virtual realm and into the mainstream. As of early September, “Fourth Wing” was riding high at No.

We’re seeing and hearing from the cast in Netflix’s buzzy live-action series One Piece, based on Eiichiro Oda’s best-selling manga series in history.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer On the heels of its splashy debut, the producers behind Netflix’s “One Piece” say scripts for a possible Season 2 are completed and that the next season could be “ready to air” in a year, once production is able to begin. “We’ve got scripts ready,” Marty Adelstein, CEO of Tomorrow Studios, which produces the live-action “One Piece” in partnership with manga creator Eiichiro Oda and publisher Shueisha, told Variety Thursday.

Netflix’s One Piece brings the anime phenomena into the live-action realm.Developed by showrunners Matt Owens and Steven Maeda (Helix, Pan Am), the series is based on the ongoing manga by Eiichiro Oda which was adapted into an anime from 1999.The Netflix series stars Iñaki Godoy as the lead character Monkey D. Luffy, who sets off from his village with an assembled crew on a journey to find the titular treasure to become king of the pirates.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Comcast and Disney last week signed a modification agreement to bring forward the timing of their formal Hulu sale talks to Sept. 30 from its previous January 2024 timeline, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts says.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer Amid an ongoing strike, the Writers Guild of America East begins voting today on its new council members, including the successor for longtime president Michael Winship. With the strike environment generating solidarity across the WGAE and its WGA West counterpart, it would seem that the election would be a straightforward affair with WGAE members on the same page about what they want from their guild.

One point for the Straw Hat Pirates!

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers through the Season 1 finale of “One Piece,” now streaming on Netflix. Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s bestselling manga “One Piece” launched Friday, giving fans their long-awaited chance to compare the eight-episode first season to its print and anime versions. The manga takes place in a fantastical world where pirates and marines battle for control over the Blue Sea.

“One Piece” debuted Aug. 31, bringing fans of Oda’s manga into the world of Luffy’s (Iñaki Godoy) exotic pirate adventures in an unprecedented way. As Luffy and his fellow Straw Hat nomads set sail in search of the One Piece treasure, the real-life cast brings Oda’s tales to life in a brighter, newly-imagined manner, all guided by the artists himself.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer “How I Met Your Father” has been canceled after two seasons at Hulu, Variety has confirmed. The Hilary Duff-led “How I Met Your Mother” spinoff concluded its second (and now final) season July 11 without revealing who Duff’s character, Sophie, ended up having a child with.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer New York City filming permits declined 53% year over year in August, which marked the first full month of the year during which both the Writers Guild of America (WGA) and the Screen Actors Guild/American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) were on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). Per the Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MoME), 364 permits were issued to 157 projects from Aug. 1 to Aug.

Jennifer Maas TV Business Writer SPOILER ALERT: This interview contains spoilers through Episode 2 of “One Piece,” now streaming on Netflix. When Marc Jobst came on as director and executive producer of “One Piece,” Netflix and Tomorrow Studios’ adaptation of Eiichiro Oda’s iconic pirate manga, he had a clear connection to the gig early on, as he had directed multiple episodes of the high-seas drama “Black Sails.” That show, which ran for four season on Starz, features several of the ships that Netflix commandeered to refashion into the bright and colorful ones used in “One Piece.” While the series’ crew was handling that overhaul, Jobst (who has also directed episodes of “The Witcher,” and an episode of “Luke Cage” that was written by “One Piece” co-showrunner Matt Owens) was working to create an overall aesthetic for the “blue skies” adaptation of “One Piece” that also allowed for the natural incorporation of the manga’s darkest elements, including villain Buggy the Clown (Jeff Ward). Buggy is a nemesis that teenage aspiring pirate king Monkey D.

The casting team for the live-action “One Piece” series really lucked out.

Alison Herman TV Critic As a school of adaptation, the live-action take on anime and manga is only slightly less cursed than the live-action series or film based on a video game. Yet remarkably, 2023 is set to be a banner year for both.