Netflix’s One Piece Showrunner Says the Anime Is Taking Over His Life

One Piece has enjoyed decades of success to date, and it is about to tackle a new frontier soon. It has taken some time to get there, but creator Eiichiro Oda is making headway on a live-action adaptation of the anime. Netflix has made headway with its take on the anime, and it seems its showrunner has been taken over by the Straw Hat crew.

Over on Twitter, Steven Maeda shared as much after sharing a tweet he found on his feed. The post, which can be seen below, came from Totally Not Mark to start as he showed how One Piece has taken over his work station. Maeda says he feels the same as the showrunner has been hard at work on One Piece.

“Tell me about it,” the producer shared.

Of course, fans are happy to see this kind of engagement from Maeda. It is not secret that anime adaptations have a bad reputation in Hollywood, and that is because of their shoddy quality. A few successes have been released, but Netflix has much to prove following its mixed take on Death Note. By turning One Piece into a live-action series, Netflix might just break the curse, and it is a good sign that Maeda is a fan of Oda’s series.

At this point, there are few hard details about this adaptation out, but One Piece is expected to start with the East Blue saga upon its debut. No casting has been done for the show which has left much up in the air for fans. But thanks to a recent interview with Marty Adelstein, the head of Tomorrow Studios has updated fans on the show’s status. The exec believes One Piece will be delayed because of the COVID-19 outbreak, but the hope is to get things back on track ASAP.

“We were supposed to start filming [One Piece] in August in Cape Town, South Africa. We anticipate the date being able to film [now is] September, at the latest,” Adelstein shared with SyFy Wire.

“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. 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.”

Are you excited for One Piece to make its live-action debut? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @MeganPetersCB to talk all things comics and anime!