One Piece Creator Oda Rejected Early Netflix Script After Budget Cuts
The account puts a number and a cause on the One Piece adaptation's early turbulence: a Netflix executive's demand to halve the budget and cut two episodes produced scripts the creator rejected, and the platform backed off rather than proceed without his approval.
Reporting from 1 source: Animehunch.
Former showrunner Steve Maeda said on the Trash Taste podcast that Eiichiro Oda rejected an early version of Netflix's One Piece live-action adaptation after a new executive asked for the budget to be cut in half and the season reduced from 10 episodes to eight. Maeda said the revised scripts drifted from the manga, and Oda told Netflix it was not what he had agreed to.
The writing process ran about two years and produced three versions of the season before the one that aired. Maeda said the team wrote the first set of scripts without clear budget figures, then a new Netflix executive reviewed them and asked for the budget to be cut in half and the episode order trimmed to eight.
Maeda thought the eight-episode version could work as television but was moving away from the manga's storytelling, and he worried the show would be canceled. Oda's objection led Netflix to revisit the decision. Maeda credited the platform for being willing to reconsider.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.