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Marty Adelstein: One Piece Live-Action Series 'Could Set New Record for TV Production Costs'

Producer Marty Adelstein (Prison Break, Teen Wolf), the producer for both the live-action Cowboy Bebop and One Piece projects, commented in Japanese regarding the One Piece adaptation on Friday:

I have been a fan of One Piece for 20 years. It is an honor to be entrusted with such an important work by Shueisha and Mr. Oda. I am enthusiastic to give my all to make One Piece succeed. I think this project could set a new record for the highest production cost in television drama history. The work's worldwide fame merits this scale of production.

Tomorrow Studios, a partnership between Adelstein and ITV Studios, is producing the Hollywood live-action television show adaptation of the manga.

Original creator Eiichiro Oda also commented regarding the live-action project on Friday, saying his condition for the project was that the project "will never betray the fans who have supported me for 20 years."

The One Piece manga centers on Monkey D. Luffy, an aspiring pirate who, like many other pirates, dream of claiming the legendary "One Piece" treasure left behind by a legendary pirate. He gathers a crew and a ship and explores the Grand Line in search of the treasure, while also confronting rival pirates and government navies along the way.

Oda began serializing the manga in Shueisha's Weekly Shonen Jump magazine on July 19, 1997, and Shueisha published the manga's 85th compiled book volume in Japan on May 2. As of April, the manga has 350 million copies in print in Japan, and 66 million copies in print outside of Japan, with publications in more than 30 countries. The manga set a world record in June 2015 for having 320,866,000 copies printed worldwide as of December 2014. The world record is for "The most copies published for the same comic book series by a single author."

Sources: Oricon News, The Japan Times (Kazuaki Nagata)