Samurai Champloo live-action series in the works from One Piece producers

Tomorrow Studios, the production company behind Netflix’s live-action One Piece, is reportedly developing a television adaptation of the cult anime Samurai Champloo, according to reports.

The anime’s original creator, Shinichirō Watanabe, is reportedly attached to the project. The development news comes shortly after the release of the second season of One Piece on March 10.

After One Piece, Tomorrow Studios eyes live-action Samurai Champloo

The potential adaptation would represent another significant step for producers Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements, who strengthened Tomorrow Studios’ standing in the anime-to-live-action space with the global success of One Piece.

“We had dinner with [Watanabe] in Japan and said, if we move forward on doing ‘Samurai Champloo,’ we really want you to be a part of the creative,” Clements told an American entertainment portal. “We were thrilled that he was willing to do that.”

The project is currently in its early stages of development, and Tomorrow Studios has not yet pitched it to networks. However, producer Becky Clements has said that the studio has already received “a lot of incoming calls” expressing interest in the title.

Much like One Piece, the planned adaptation aims to remain loyal to the original anime while updating it for contemporary audiences. Given that hip-hop music played a defining role in the original series, Clements noted that music will once again be central to the project, and the studio hopes to collaborate with a well-known recording artist to help shape the show’s soundtrack.

Tomorrow Studios had previously adapted another of Shinichirō Watanabe’s acclaimed anime, Cowboy Bebop, for Netflix in 2021, though the series was cancelled after its first season.

Since premiering in 2023, One Piece Season 1 has been a massive success, spending eight weeks in Netflix’s Global Top 10, reaching the No. 1 spot in over 75 countries, and becoming the first English-language Netflix series to debut at No. 1 in Japan. The show has since crossed 100 million views and is now among the platform’s most downloaded titles.

Its second season, which premiered on March 10, debuted with a perfect 100 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Originally released on May 20, 2004, Samurai Champloo centres on Fuu, a quirky waitress who recruits two highly skilled but vastly different swordsmen, the impulsive, hip-hop-inspired Mugen and the composed, traditional samurai Jin, to help her search for the mysterious “samurai who smells of sunflowers.”

After rescuing them from execution, the trio set off on a journey across Edo-period Japan, embarking on a series of adventures in a stylised world that blends historical settings with modern influences, much like a road movie.

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