Netflix's One Piece has officially begun filming.
The streaming company announced that its latest anime to live-action series has moved onto the next stage of production with a series of pictures posted to one of its official Twitter accounts. The pictures show several members of its cast, including Iñaki Godoy (Who Killed Sara?, Go, Youth!), who will play the role of the series' main character, Monkey D. Luffy, and Emily Rudd (Fear Street), who will portray the live-action version of the Straw Hat's navigator, Nami. Steve Maeda, who previously worked on The X-Files and is now serving as One Piece's head writer and co-show runner alongside Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s Matt Owens, also posted pictures from the show's first day of filming.
my body is ready pic.twitter.com/9R81H5QtyV
— Netflix Geeked (@NetflixGeeked) February 1, 2022
The Day of the Beginning… pic.twitter.com/yvwy03874j
— Steven Maeda (@stevemaeda) January 31, 2022
The live-action One Piece was first announced in 2017. The series is being produced as a collaboration between Netflix and Tomorrow Studios, the production company behind the short-lived Cowboy Bebop live-action series. In addition to Godoy and Rudd, the rebooted series will also star Boiling Point's Taz Skylar as the fighting chef Sanji. Japanese-American actor Mackenyu, who has already starred in a number of Japanese live-action remakes of anime, such as Rurouni Kenshin: Final Chapter and Chihayafuru, will portray the swordsman Roronoa Zoro. Jacob Romero Gibson (Greenleaf, All Rise) will play the role of Usopp. Series creator Eiichiro Oda is serving as an executive producer on the new show.
The show is being filmed in South Africa. Several weeks ago, an eagle-eyed fan reportedly managed to take some long-distance photos of the series' Cape Town set, which shows several tall-masted ships in various states of construction. Among these ships is the distinctive duck-shaped hull of Miss Love Duck, the vessel captained by "Iron Mace" Alvida, one of the first antagonistic pirate captains that Luffy meets early on in his adventure.
Oda's One Piece first graced the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump over 24 years ago and is now the best selling manga series of all time by a wide margin, with about half-a-billion copies in circulation worldwide. The series enjoyed an eventful 2021, with the manga publishing both its 1000th chapter and its 100th collected volume, while the anime adaptation aired its 1000th episode. Despite the franchise seemingly only getting more popular with age, both Oda and publisher Shueisha have teased that the manga is finally nearing its conclusion and the Straw Hat Pirates' adventures may be coming to an end in the near future.
Oda's manga is available in English from VIZ Media. The full anime series can be streamed from Funimation and Crunchyroll, while parts of the series are available on Hulu and Netflix.
Source: Twitter (1, 2)
