Netflix Producer Teases One Piece's Casting and Scale

Netflix's new live-action One Piece series is coming together, and the producer behind the new adaptation is teasing the cast and scale of the new project. Announced to be in the works a couple of years ago with a confirmation that production was finally moving forward earlier this year, Netflix is teaming up with Tomorrow Studios for a ten episode series adapting the East Blue saga of Eiichiro Oda's original manga. Producer for the series, Marty Adelstein, recently spoke with Syfy about the upcoming project and teased how big it's going to be.

Adelstein revealed that filming for the series was scheduled to begin sometime this August, but will most likely be pushed back like many productions impacted by the novel coronavirus pandemic, "We were supposed to start filming in August in Cape Town, South Africa. We anticipate the date being able to film [now is] September, at the latest."

Adelstein also teased how far the project has come by noting that writing for the scripts is pretty much done at this point (corroborating a tease from showrunner Steven Maeda), and casting for the new series is gearing up to start soon as well, "We have basically all 10 scripts written. We will start casting when we go back. My suspicion is June 1, but we will start doing our casting. We have a lot of names that we're talking about, and we should be in production in September."

For fans worried about the live-action adaptation of such a massively popular series, Adelstein also confirmed that the team is working closely with original series creator Eiichiro Oda while noting that it's going to be even bigger than his current project, Snowpiercer, "We have been working very closely with Sensei Oda. So, we're going to get started, and this one is very big. I mean, Snowpiercer was a big production; this is even bigger."

Netflix currently has not set a release date for One Piece's live-action series, but will begin offering the first two arcs of the anime next month. How are you feeling about One Piece's new live-action series so far? Are you excited to see what a live-action take on the franchise will bring? Which character are you most curious to see make the jump? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or talk to me directly about all things anime and other cool things @Valdezology on Twitter!

via Syfy