The past few months have been bare of any news on Netflix’s live-action Cowboy Bebop: the last update we got from the already-divisive series is that production has been halted due to lead star John Cho sustaining a knee injury while on set last October.
Five months after that news, we now get an update on the series courtesy of online newspaper Observer. The news outlet shares that they were recently able to talk to series writer and executive producer Jeff Pinkner—who said during the short interview that he was on his way to a “notes call” for a 2nd season script.
While he did not mention a more direct confirmation to a second season, he had this to say about the show:
“I think that I’m very excited by our opportunity to take this iconic anime and bring it to life. I think that our actors are spectacular. The world that we’re creating down in New Zealand that we’re excited to get back to as soon as we can is a really fun, dynamic visualization of this insane anime. I think that because we have these hour-long episodes, we have an opportunity to take the anime and sort of like just deepen and dimensionalize the source material.”
He also mentioned Yoko Kanno, the original composer for the amazing music of the Cowboy Bebop anime:
“Really tell stories set in that world in a way that hopefully will not only delight the fans of anime but expose a whole bunch of new people to the world of Cowboy Bebop, the awesome work of Yoko Kanno. It’s a delight. It’s entirely different from Lost in every way but it’s been a joy.”
The staff of the live-action Cowboy Bebop had never mentioned a collaboration with Yoko Kanno before, so her name coming up is quite a surprise. We’ll all just have to see if Kanno is indeed involved.
Bebop John Cho as Spike Spiegel, Mustafa Shakir as Spike’s partner Jet Black, Daniella Pineda as amnesiac con-artist Faye Valentine, Elena Satine as Spike’s lover Julia, and Alex Hassell as Vicious, Spike’s best-friend-turned-mortal-enemy.
Alex Garcia Lopez, who directed Daredevil and The Witcher, is on board to direct the first two episodes of Bebop. Described by Netflix as a “Live-action TV drama”, Cowboy Bebop is slated to run for 10 episodes. No new release date has been announced yet.
The live-action adaptation is a co-production between Netflix and Tomorrow Studios, which is a partnership between producer Marty Adelstein (Teen Wolf, Prison Break) and British production company ITV Studios. The original anime’s director, Shinichi Watanabe, will be serving as consultant for the Netflix adaptation. Key staff from Sunrise, the anime studio that produced the original series, will also be serving as the show’s executive producers along with other Western producers.
Cowboy Bebop follows the story of Spike Spiegel and his crew aboard the spaceship Bebop. The series is mostly about their crew’s adventures in hunting down space criminals and turning them in for a reward. The story’s main conflict, however, centers on the rivalry between Spike and his former best friend Vicious, with the former seeking to avenge the death of the woman he loved.
Source: Anime News Network