Warning: SPOILERS for Netflix’s One Piece are ahead!
When you’re embarking on a journey to the Grand Line to find Gold Roger’s treasure and become King of the Pirates, you’re going to make a lot of enemies along the way. In the One Piece manga and anime, one of the foes Monkey D. Luffy and the Straw Hat Pirates faced early on was Don Krieg, the armored captain of the Krieg Pirates who carries out all kinds of hidden weapons. That didn’t happen in Netflix’s live-action adaptation of One Piece, and showrunner Steven Madea explained why Krieg’s screen time was drastically reduced in the show.
During his extensive interview with IGN, Madea detailed how important it was to establish McKinley Belcher III’s Arlong, the powerful fish-man who leads the Arlong Pirates, as Season 1’s big bad at just the right time. In order to accomplish this, it became necessary for Don Krieg to be removed from the Baratie arc that introduced Taz Skylar’s Sanji and insert Arlong in his place. In the showrunner’s words:
And so for example, with Arlong, the idea was, in an eight-episode television season, you want to have the sense that there is some big obstacle standing at the end of your journey. And so to introduce Arlong in Episode 7 and 8 only would’ve felt like: ‘Well, wait, who is this guy? Okay, yeah. He’s really ferocious, but I don’t really know him yet. I’ve got to get to know him.’ And so we said: ‘Hey, let’s move him up. Let’s introduce him in an early episode as a big bad threat that would return later in the season. And then rather than Krieg, who is a standalone antagonist who doesn’t take us really anywhere new, let’s introduce Arlong there instead.’ And we still got Krieg in the show. But let’s try something a little bit different so the new audience gets the sense that there is something big and forbidding out there waiting for us.
Milton Schorr was cast to play Don Krieg in just one scene of the live-action One Piece, where he found out the hard way that one doesn’t wake Dracule Mihawk from his nap. The sword-wielding Warlord of the Sea played by Steven Ward easily destroyed Krieg’s men and fleet, and after Schorr’s character failed to gun down Hawk, he died soon after, with viewers and Vincent Regan’s Monkey D. Garp hearing his final screams. As Steven Madea laid out, compared to other One Piece antagonists, Don Krieg doesn’t do much to propel the larger story forward, so the hard call was made to simply present him as a minor threat. That benefitted both Arlong and Mihawk, with the latter easily showing why he’s the world’s greatest swordsman.
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This is just one of the many differences in the live-action One Piece compared to the anime, so if you’re in seeing what kind of a threat Don Krieg was in animated form, the original series can also be streamed with a Netflix subscription. As for the live-action show, it’s quickly become one of the best Netflix shows, as shown by the critical acclaim it’s earned and surpassing viewership records for the platform that previously belong to Stranger Things and Wednesday. Although One Piece Season 2 hasn’t been announced, Marty Adelstein, CEO of Tomorrow Studios, which produced the show, shared that scripts have already been written for another round of episodes. As such, if Season 2 is greenlit, Adelstein believes it could be “ready to air” somewhere between “a year to 18 months” afterwards.
Don’t forget to look over the shows and movies like One Piece that are worth watching, and keep your eyes peeled on CinemaBlend for more coverage on the live-action adaptation. The 2023 TV schedule is also worth pursuing if you’re in the mood to watch different kinds of programming.