Netflix’s One Piece is shaking things up a touch, as one of its showrunners switches roles to make way for a writer from Disney Plus’ Percy Jackson show.
It’s a good time to be Joe Tracz. Having served as a writer for a couple of episodes on the generally well received Percy Jackson show, as reported by Variety, he’s now making his way over to Netflix to head up One Piece as co-showrunner alongside Matt Owens. He’ll be taking the place of Steven Maeda, who developed the first season alongside Owens, and will now be shifting into an executive producer role. “Joe has brought a wealth of enthusiasm and experience into our second season that will help take One Piece to new heights,” Owens said in a statement. “We’re incredibly lucky to have him as a co-captain of this ship. The best crew on the seas grows larger!”
Tracz himself was, unsurprisingly, enthusiastic about joining the show, saying, “I’ve been lucky to work on big adaptations of several beloved series, and they don’t come bigger or more beloved than One Piece. I’m a huge fan of Oda-san’s incredible imagination and I was blown away by what the live-action team created in season one. So it’s a dream and a joy to come aboard the Going Merry as it enters the Grand Line for an even more giant season two.”
As you can already tell from having worked on Percy Jackson, Tracz is no stranger to pre-existing IP – he also worked on the Netflix adaptation of A Series of Unfortunate Events, and even created his own show for the streamer, Dash & Lily, so he’ll likely be familiar with how the company operates already anyway.
One Piece season 2 is expected to shoot later this year, with the main cast set to return, but there’s as-of-yet no release window, so you’ll likely have to wait until 2025 at the very least.