Promo goes on for One Piece sans Hollywood stars
A big chunk of a show’s success is how well it is marketed to get the audience watching. In the entertainment world, pre Screen Actors Guild and American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) strike, the Hollywood stars would do a global tour in Asia, Europe and the Americas and visit the key film or TV markets to promote their project.
They would even tirelessly answer questions most likely repeated by journalists for the whole day just to make sure the message of their work would reach their fans in those countries. Today, the actors would not even post on social media to promote or show pride in their hard-earned projects because these might go against the strike.
While it is important to fight for one’s rights, it is also ironic how the young actors who are supposed to go out to get discovered for more opportunities will now have to ignore their project, missing the opportunity to meet the press and fans, and tell the world of their efforts in their respective shows.
Case in point is the successful release of the live-action adaptation of one of the longest-running anime series, One Piece! The stars of the show — Iñaki Godoy, Emily Rudd, Jacob Gibson, Taz Skylar and Mackenyu — are robbed of that at the moment. While One Piece live-action is raking in the streams on Netflix, the lead stars can’t do anything but watch in the sidelines.
We went to Tokyo, Japan this week to experience the center of the global celebration of One Piece. It was a four-day event full of activities but with one unusual absence in the itinerary and that was to interview the very stars of the show before it got launched.
Jacob Gibson who plays Ussop and Taz Skylar who plays Sanji were also in Tokyo at the same time, but there was no sighting of them whatsoever in the One Piece activities that we did usually in Hollywood junkets or show promotions. A day would normally be allotted for the stars to do press time but since they could not, we spoke to the Japanese voice actors Mayumi Tanaka (Monkey D. Luffy), Kazuya Nakai (Roronoa Zoro), Akemi Okamura (Nami), Kappei Yamaguchi (Usopp) and Hiroaki Kirata (Sanji) instead. They are based here in Japan and are not covered by the strike so they could promote the show.
We also met Koji Kawamoto, the actual sword stunt choreographer of One-Piece live action series and we did some moves with him to experience being in a fight scene on screen. There was even a glam team!
It is clear that Netflix is tapping on the key experiences a journalist needs to complete their review on the story. In the Odaiba area in Japan, Netflix even closed down an area in the United Cinemas Aqua as they decked it out with exclusive fan mementos such as the actual map of the Grand Line used in the show, the coins in the treasure chest and the actual outfits that the stars wore in the series. It took us a day and a half to finish the content capturing so we would not run out of video for airing. We even had One Piece-inspired bento-making to cap off the One Piece #StrawHatsInTokyo event.
Generally, with how Netflix handled the “star-less” promotion for one of their biggest series this year, it was very successful. But it left me with the thought that it would be quite a while until we’d see the Hollywood stars again. Hope the SAG-AFTRA strike will reach a fruition and good conclusion so that Hollywood could be up and running again soon. The live-action version of One Piece is now showing on Netflix.
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