Eiichiro Oda's "One Piece" is finally getting a live-action treatment. The longtime running manga, which follows the adventures of Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates, is in the works at Tomorrow Studios — a joint venture between television producer Marty Adelstein and ITV Studios.
The announcement was made by Weekly Shonen Jump editor-in-chief Hiroyuki Nakano during "One Piece's" 20th-anniversary celebration last Friday, July 21. Oda is also reportedly on board to oversee the adaptation; no writer has been announced yet.
"There have been offers from various directions about live-action before but they did not really get settled for a number of reasons," Nakano said, according to The Japan Times. "This time, it's finally come to the point where we can make an announcement... Please look forward to it."
With respect to why "One Piece" will be a foreign TV series and not a Japanese one, Nakano said the decision came from Oda himself.
The renowned manga artist personally picked Tomorrow Studios to ensure the adaptation's overall quality. His one condition for making a live-action adaptation is that "it never lets down the fans that have been supporting the series for 20 years."
In a separate press statement, Adelstein said he has been a "One Piece" fan since it was first released and feels honored that Shueisha and Oda entrusted his studio to create the live-action series. He also said that the planned adaptation could be one of the most expensive live-action series ever made.
Allegedly, the adaptation's production costs may surpass HBO's "Game of Thrones" and Netflix's "Sense8," which respectively cost approximately $6–10 million and $9 million per episode.
"One Piece" is one of the best-selling manga in history; it has sold more than 350 million copies in Japan and 66 million overseas, according to Anime News Network.
