‘One Piece’ Total Franchise Gross Finally Surpasses ‘Lord of the Rings’

One Piece has been sailing the Grand Line for years now, and it seems its pirates nabbed a trove of treasure this year. After all, the Straw Hats can say they helped kicked The Lord of the Rings to the curb, and they’ve got the receipts to prove it.

According to recent reports, fans were informed One Piece hit a new franchise milestone. The series surpassed J.R.R. Tolkein’s iconic fantasy franchise in total gross, and anime fans are relishing in the victory.

Right now, The Lord of the Rings franchise is said to have earned an estimated $19.9 billion since its creation in 1937. One Piece has gone above that total as the series has earned just over $20 billion total since it was made in 1997.

If you are curious as to how this takeover took place, fans can thank the One Piece manga. The weekly series has earned a whopping $8.87 billion to date with its merchandise sales and video games coming in close behind. As for The Lord of the Rings, it has hefty grosses pulling in with book sales at $9.13 billion, but the figures dip after the franchise’s films are accounted for.

With One Piece in the lead, the series has a new target on the horizon it could very well surpass. Toy Story is next on the list as the Disney project has earned a bit more than One Piece, and then the shonen title would have to fight off franchises like Fist of the North Star, Cars, Barbie, and Dragon Ball. However, it is hard to see One Piece becoming a threat to the top pick of the world’s highest-grossing media franchises. The number one spot goes to Pokemon as the anime-gaming franchise has grossed about $90 billion since its 1996 debut.

So, are you surprised to see how much money One Piece has made? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!

Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece first began serialization in Shueisha’s Weekly Shonen Jump in 1997. It has since been collected into over 80 volumes, and has been a critical and commercial success worldwide with many of the volumes breaking printing records in Japan. The manga has even set a Guinness World Record for the most copies published for the same comic book by a single author, and is the best-selling manga series worldwide with over 430 million copies sold. The series still ranked number one in manga sales in 2018, which surprised fans of major new entries.

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