One Piece’s Hollywood live-action TV show was announced last month, with fans having a mixed reaction to the idea. During the anime’s 20th anniversary, One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda signed a deal for the anime to be recreated as a live-action adaptation. With that, it is now reported that the series could set a new record for TV production costs.

According to Anime News Network and Anime Herald, One Piece’s live-action TV show will cost up to $9-10 million per episode. The company behind the project is Tomorrow Studios, with Marty Adelestein producing the series. Adelestein later proved that this large figure could be true in a recent interview.

“I’ve been a fan of One Piece for the past twenty years. To be entrusted with such an important work by Shueisha and Mr. Oda is an honor. It’s with great enthusiasm that I will give my all to make One Piece a success. I think that this project could set a new record for the most expensive drama series in TV history.”

(Photo: Toei Animation)

Given One Piece’s global fame, it makes sense that a great deal of money is invested in the production, as it will likely have a larger return. However, fans have already expressed their concerns with the production, saying that it will be too difficult to recreate all the unusual bodies that most One Piece characters have. Although with such a large budget, it should now be possible to recreate these bodily abnormalities.

One Piece has had over 870 manga chapters since Eiichiro Oda launched the series in Weekly Shonen Jump back in 1997. Since then the series has also had over 800 animated episodes released; thirteen animated films and has had more than three-dozen video games.

Viz Media’s synopsis for One Piece can be read below:

As a child, Monkey D. Luffy dreamed of becoming King of the Pirates. But his life changed when he accidentally gained the power to stretch like rubber—at the cost of never being able to swim again! Years later, Luffy sets off in search of the One Piece, said to be the greatest treasure in the world…

Eiichiro Oda began his manga career in 1992 at the age of 17, when his one-shot cowboy manga Wanted! won second place in the coveted Tezuka manga awards. Oda went on to work as an assistant to some of the biggest manga artists in the industry, including Nobuhiro Watsuki, before winning the Hop Step Award for new artists. His pirate adventure One Piece, which debuted in Weekly Shonen Jump magazine in 1997, quickly became one of the most popular manga in Japan.