As franchises go, One Piece is one of the most beloved and well-recognized manga series ever. Since making its debut on July 22nd, 1997 in an issue of Weekly Shōnen Jump, 969 chapters of the manga have been published, along with 95 volumes, which continues to increase.
One Piece is also recognized as the highest-selling manga of all time, outselling the likes of Dragon Ball, Golgo 13, and Naruto, with over 462 million copies sold. This also makes One Piece one of the highest-grossing fictional franchises of all time, generating over $21 billion in revenue across its multiple mangas, films, video games, and various other pieces of merchandise.
At Netflix TUDUM, Netflix confirmed our previous reporting that One Piece season 1 will be releasing on Netflix globally on August 31st, 2023 alongside a first-look trailer.
Iñaki Godoy (Monkey D. Luffy), Mackenyu (Roronoa Zoro), Emily Rudd (Nami), Jacob Romero Gibson (Usopp), and Taz Skylar (Sanji) were all at the event in Brazil.
The story of One Piece takes place on an alternate version of Earth, and one that is currently in the midst of the ‘Golden Age of Pirates’. Ruthless cut-throat pirates rule the seas, and only the strongest have the chance to lay claim to the mythical treasure known as ‘One Piece‘ that was left behind by the greatest pirate of them all Gol D. Roger. Years after the death of Gol D. Roger, a young boy by the name of Monkey D. Luffy has dreams of raising his own crew, finding One Piece, and declaring himself as Pirate King.
As we mentioned above, the key production company behind the series is Tomorrow Studios. Their notable projects include Hanna for Prime Video and Snowpiercer for TNT. Of course, the production company is also readying up Cowboy Bebop for Netflix too.
That leads us to our showrunner for the series.
Steven Maeda is going to be the showrunner for One Piece. His long career has had him involved with titles like The X Files, Lost, Lie to Me, Helix and Day Break.
The writing staff for One Piece also includes:
• Diego Gutierrez • Matt Owens • Allison Weintraub • Ian Stokes • Lindsay Gelfand • Laura Jacqmin • Jason Cho • Damani Johnson • Tom Hyndman
The writers spent their last time together on a virtual Zoom meeting in May 2020.
Filming took forever to get underway.
If it wasn’t for the global pandemic, then we would have likely seen production start in the Summer of 2020. Since then, we’ve had multiple delays and false filming start dates.
Most of the filming is taking place at Cape Town Film Studios, which has ample space for the pirate ships, and according to someone familiar with the production, they have made three pirate ships for the show so far.