One Piece Showrunner Steven Maeda Says the High Cost of Adapting Popular Manga Is Holding Back Hollywood’s Live-Action Anime Boom

Netflix’s live-action One Piece showed that a Japanese manga franchise could become a major international television success. However, the series has not sparked the wave of live-action anime and manga adaptations that executive producer Steven Maeda expected. According to Maeda, the high cost of adapting established Japanese intellectual property, combined with Hollywood’s ongoing financial challenges, is making it difficult to turn promising projects into productions. Speaking to C21Media during the Tokyo International Film Festival Content Market, Maeda said he was…