correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly said the "One Piece" franchise has generated more than $516 million in manga sales. The franchise has sold more than 516 million copies of its books. This version has been corrected.
Forget “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Game of Thrones” and umpteen-dozen Marvel movies. Netflix is launching a show based on one of the world’s most popular fantasy-adventure franchises on Thursday, not withstanding that many Americans have never heard of it.
“One Piece,” a proudly goofy manga series about magical pirates hunting treasure under the nose of an oppressive world government, has sold millions of comics since it debuted in Japan in the mid-1990s. It has inspired dozens of animated movies, a defunct theme park and a TV anime series that’s been running for a quarter century. But the new Netflix show marks the first time that the hat-wearing birds, magical fruit and rubber-boned protagonist of “One Piece” will appear in an American series — and a live-action one to boot.
