Earlier this month, Netflix began filming on the second season of its One Piece live-action series. As production on the hit series enters its third week, many fans are wondering when the show will return. Unfortunately, the wait may be longer than anticipated.
Speaking to Deadline, series showrunner Becky Clements offered an update on the production status of the show's sophomore season. Noting that this is a "very VFX heavy year," she stated that it's "going to be a while" before the season is finished.
"We are a long time out," she added.
Netflix has yet to announce a release date for Season 2 of One Piece, although it's a safe bet to assume that it won't be arriving this year. "We film into December," Clements confirmed.
Filming for Season 2 is currently taking place in South Africa, which has recently been experiencing a "lot of rain." While the amount of rain may impact the production and filming timeline, Clements assuring that it will not at all affect the creative vision.
"No, we will absolutely maintain the creative and all the exteriors and blue sky and visual effects," she explained. "We recently moved something to the interior, and we agreed that in the end, that interior scene doesn’t feel as dynamic as we need it to. We’ll find a place on the schedule when our weather gets better to shoot it again."
"Netflix, they understand, they are good partners when we have to make those last-minute decisions," she continued. "July, August are the tougher months, and we adjusted our schedule so that the majority of our exterior stuff will shoot closer to the end of the year, summer."
It sounds like the crew was well aware of the obstacles nature would throw their way and have planned accordingly. Therefore, we should hopefully not see any delay in the actual filming of the show. As Clements mentioned though, this season will rely heavily on VFX, which means post-production could take some time.
There's still hope that One Piece Season 2 will premiere sometime in 2025. If it does, it will probably be later in the year. The first season of the live-action adaptation debuted on Netflix on August 31, 2023, and became the No. 1 title globally for the streaming platform with 37.8 million views amassed in less than two weeks. The series received glowing reviews from critics and fans alike.
Elsewhere in the interview, Clements suggested that they have plans for multiple seasons of the series. Netflix has currently only greenlit a second season, but it sounds like Netflix is all-in on the live-action series.