Though the numbers aren’t out yet, Netflix’s live-action “One Piece” adaptation has been a success, going by the reviews at least. The series has racked up an 83% with critics and a 95% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes thus far.
Matt Owens and Steven Maeda served as showrunners on the series with heavy input and approvals from the franchise’s creator Eiichiro Oda. In a new interview with Variety, Maeda was asked if he and Owens have planned out a second season.
Netflix hasn’t made any decisions regarding another season yet, but it’s not for lack of source material with decades worth of Oda’s ongoing manga available – not to mention well over 1,000 episodes of the anime.
He says, for now, they are just dealing with having delivered the first season successfully and so haven’t looked that far ahead yet:
“It’s a worthwhile ask — and answers will be forthcoming. I don’t want to speak on the continuation of ‘One Piece’ at this point in time. Just because this first season was such a bear. It was a wonderful challenge, but it took years out of our lives, and I want to really let the focus be on that for the launch.”
The eight-episode first season reportedly adapts roughly the first 100 chapters of the manga, most of the ‘East Blue’ manga saga. The overall manga currently clocks in at over 1,000 chapters as of last month.
Should the viewing numbers be strong, expect renewal news sooner rather than later.
