We are, we are, on the cruise~ to Hollywood!
Yesterday, fans gathered in Tokyo for a fan event celebrating the 20th anniversary of the One Piece manga series. At the event, Weekly Shonen Jump editor-in-chief Yoshihisa Heishi took to the stage to announce that a Hollywood TV adaptation of the franchise is in the works.
The new series will be produced by Tomorrow Studios, a joint venture between producer Marty Adelstein (Prison Break) and ITV Studios. This is the second Japanese franchise that’s come under Tomorrow Studios’ banner recently, as last month it was revealed that they’re working on a live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop.
Eiichiro Oda’s One Piece manga launched in the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump in July 1997. The series, which spans over 870 chapters and 85 volumes as of press time, has sold over 416 million books as of June, making it the best-selling manga in history. The series holds the Guinness World Record for “the most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author.”
Since its creation, One Piece has spawned an ongoing anime TV series (800 episodes as of press time), thirteen theatrical films, and over three dozen video games.
Viz Media currently holds the domestic rights to the One Piece manga, while Funimation has the anime rights. Viz describes the series as:
In a world of pirates, one man wants to become the greatest of them all: Monkey D. Luffy, who gained strange powers from eating the cursed Gum-Gum Fruit! As a child, Luffy was inspired to become a pirate by listening to the tales of the buccaneer “Red-Haired” Shanks. Now, Luffy is grown up and sets out to sea in a rowboat, in search of One Piece, the greatest treasure in the world! But is Roronoa Zoro, the pirate hunter, a friend or a foe?
Sources: Oricon, Comic Natalie
