Future Seasons of One Piece May Fall Victim to Stranger Things’ Curse
The script for season 2 is already finished, but fans point out a potentially massive problem with creating more seasons of the series.
No one saw the runaway success of the One Piece live-action series coming, so fans were stunned when Netflix actually managed to pull off not only a great adaptation, but one based on a notoriously hard to adapt genre of manga/anime.
With all of this in mind, it seemed like a no-brainer that the show would be renewed for a second season, but it seems that the show's creators had this covered even before they knew it was going to be a hit.
In an interview with Variety, Marty Adelstein, the head of Tomorrow Studios, which produced the Netflix adaptation, revealed that the scripts for One Piece season 2 are complete and ready to go into production.
However, due to the ongoing Hollywood strikes, he believes that the most likely outcome is that season 2 will see the light of day in 12 to 18 months.
Fans point out another potential obstacle that the creators of the live-action adaptation may face in the future.
Considering that the first season barely scratched the surface of the massive story, the show will need much more than two or even five seasons, otherwise there is absolutely no point in adapting it if the story remains unfinished.
With all this in mind, there is no way that the creators will be able to take year-long breaks between seasons in the future.
This could prove to be a huge problem, especially considering that Iñaki Godoy, who plays the show's protagonist Monkey D. Luffy, is only 20 years old.
Many shows have run into the problem of young actors aging between seasons, just look at Stranger Things, so the only possible solution seems to be to shoot multiple seasons back-to-back.
If not, Godoy could easily be in his 40s by the time the story reaches its halfway point.
Another question is whether the creators will be able to maintain the standard of quality they set in the first season, although if they stick to their approach of simply treating the original with the respect it deserves, that won't be a problem at all.