I’m not sure if this is bluster or truth, but One Piece will have a high bar to beat with Rome‘s estimated $9-10 million per episode.
On Friday, producer Marty Adelstein offered a comment on the One Piece live-action TV project. Adelstein stated:
I’ve been a fan of One Piece for the past twenty years. To be entrusted with such an important work by Shueisha and Mr. Oda is an honor. It’s with great enthusiasm that I will give my all to make One Piece a success. I think that this project could set a new record for the most expensive drama series in TV history.
Given the title’s global fame, though, the scale of production is worth the investment.
Adelstein’s Tomorrow Studios is producing One Piece, as well as a live-action Cowboy Bebop TV series.
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
Update 8/17/2017: Added a link to Marketplace for a reference on the Rome budget figure.
