Netflix’s One Piece Writer Discusses COVID-19 Impact on Live-Series Production

One Piece will soon be breaking out with a brand new live-action series for Netflix, and one of the writers behind the series recently discussed the impact the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had on the production. One Piece is one of the many live-action adaptations Netflix currently has in the pipeline alongside series such as Avatar: The Last Airbender, Cowboy Bebop, and Sword Art Online, but Netflix rarely reveals anything from behind the scenes for any of its projects let alone its anime influenced ones. That’s why it was eye-opening to get an account of the impact the pandemic has had on the One Piece series.

Matt Owens (who also once served as a writer for Netflix’s Luke Cage series) recently opened up about the production with RogersBase and other members of the One Piece fan community during a special “Reverie” streaming event, and he stated how COVID-19 has had its positives and negatives on production.

Because while Owens confirms that the series has not begun shooting yet (and further confirming that the central cast has not been set as of this writing), he noted how other aspects of production are benefiting from the delay, “Obviously as with everything in our lives, COVID has thrown a gigantic wrench in things. What that has allowed us to do though, trying to take positives out of the whole situation, is get more time to get things right.”

Elaborating further, Owens stated “We can’t be shooting, we can’t be building anything, but getting design work down all that kind of stuff. We still have time to be doing things like that. Things are still moving even though, from a certain perspective, we are behind.” But because the production is behind, things such as a release window are still not set in stone either as Owens confirmed, “I honestly can’t tell you when you could expect it to be on TV yet because the infinite wisdom of Netflix’s Skynet algorithm will say when this show should be on. And we won’t really have a window for that until we know start shooting.”

Are you surprised to find out that the new One Piece series is not shooting yet? What are you hoping to see in Netflix’s live-action take on the franchise? Let us know your thoughts in the comments or you can even reach out to me directly about all things animated and other cool stuff @Valdezology on Twitter!