One Piece: Red Makes Scores With Amazing Preview Night
For decades, fans have been trying to figure out what exactly the "One Piece" is in the Shonen series that shares the same name. With creator Eiichiro Oda hinting that it will be revealed before the series draws to a close, as the manga enters the "Final Arc", the latest movie is pulling in a treasure of its own at the box office. Based on Thursday's numbers, One Piece: Red might be on its way to becoming the biggest movie of the weekend in North America.
Shanks is quite the enigmatic character in the history of One Piece, being the pirate directly responsible for not only creating Luffy's dream of becoming king of the pirates but also inadvertently causing him to eat the Devil Fruit that transformed the Straw Hat Captain into the powerhouse he is today. With One Piece spanning over two decades in both its anime and manga, Shanks himself has been conspicuously absent from Luffy's life, mostly sticking to the sidelines and seemingly going on adventures that haven't made their way to the main series. While Shanks's role in the fifteenth film remains something of a mystery, fans were blown away when it was revealed the Ultimate Diva Uta was in fact his offspring.
One Piece: Bank
During the Thursday night previews in North America, One Piece: Red made an estimated $1.6 to $1.8 million dollars, potentially setting it on a course to overthrow Warner Bros Discovery's Black Adam to take the number one spot this weekend. In 2022 alone, anime has become a big ticket item for theaters, with Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero and Jujutsu Kaisen 0 being just two examples of anime movies bringing in serious money.
In One Piece's manga, the Final Arc is currently underway, which will bring Luffy and his friends' journey to a close after over two decades of storytelling. With this fact in mind, it will be interesting to see how many more films the Shonen franchise will release in the future and whether or not movies will arrive following the conclusion of both the television series and the manga.
Do you think One Piece: Red will take the top spot for this weekend's North American box office numbers? Feel free to let us know in the comments or hit me up directly on Twitter @EVComedy to talk all things comics, anime, and the world of the Grand Line.