Spring has seemingly come early, as it looks like Netflix’s live-action adaptation has started production. At least that is what a tweet by showrunner Steven Maeda as well as the series writer and executive producer Matt Owens revealed. It’s a different approach from previous entries, as the official Netflix Geeked account usually shared the initial announcement, such as was the case with the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender adaptation. Yet, as the account is from the States, they may follow up as filming is taking place in Cape Town and that is why the production announcement is directly through their account.
While Maeda shared an elusive message of “The Day of the Beginning” with a straw hat keychain, Matt Owens‘ reveal came through his Instagram account that is a bit more direct in revealing that they’ve started production on One Piece.
This moment is big for anyone following the production that was hit with delays due to COVID. The series was first announced back in 2017 by Eiichiro Oda, who was quite excited about finally finding the team that would bring his series to live-action. At the time, it seemingly was still known as Project Roger before moving on to become Project Panda at a later date. Set photos teased the construction of the Going Merry but it wasn’t until we got the official logo in September of 2021 followed by the cast announcement in November that it felt real. So, the fact it’s finally started production just adds quite a bit of excitement and hopefully, it means we’ll get the cast in their official outfits soon.
