Marty Adelstein offers update on Netflix’s live-action One Piece adaptation
With production being shut down around the world in the film and TV worlds, many exciting projects in development are currently stuck in an unknown limbo, including Netflix’s live-action adaptation of beloved manga One Piece, and now producer Marty Adelstein has offered an update on the series. (Via ComicBook.com)
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In an interview with SyFy Wire, the Tomorrow Studios founder and CEO discussed that he is overseeing work on Netflix’s live-action adaptation of both Cowboy Bebop and One Piece and that if not for the current global health crisis, production on the latter would be starting in August in Cape Town, South Africa, but now the date they expect to film is “September, at the latest.”
“We have basically all 10 scripts written. We will start casting when we go back,” Adelstein explained. “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.”
The manga, written and illustrated by Eiichiro Oda, follows Monkey D. Luffy, the leader of a pirate crew who has the powers to turn his body into rubber after eating a “Devil Fruit,” and who ventures around a fantastical world of exotic islands and vast oceans in search of the legendary treasure known as “One Piece” to become the next Pirate King.
The series will be written by Steven Maeda (The X-Files), who will also act as showrunner and executive producer, with Matt Owens (Agents of SHIELD) also contributing to the writing and executive producing as well. They will be joined by Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements of Tomorrow Studios (Snowpiercer), who will also executive produce the series alongside original author Oda.
The manga has spawned a media franchise that includes multiple animated films, an anime series that has run for 20 seasons and is currently ongoing, numerous video games and even themed restaurants and theme park attractions in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong.
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The live-action adaptation marks the second for the streaming service’s partnership with Tomorrow Studios, as they two are also developing the Cowboy Bebop series together, with production on that series currently on hiatus until later this year following an on-set injury with star John Cho (The Grudge). Netflix is also developing a live-action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender and a sequel to its Americanized film adaptation of Death Note.
