And it’s on once more folks, as the production crew of Netflix’s live-action adaptation of cult favorite Cowboy Bebop has announced that they have been given the clearance to continue shooting in New Zealand. The clearance to continue TV productions in the said country was granted in light of the almost complete eradication of COVID-19 in the country.
Other foreign productions granted clearance to shoot by the New Zealand government are Power Rangers Beast Morphers, Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series, James Cameron’s Avatar sequels, the film Greatest Beer Run Ever, as well as other Netflix productions Sweet Tooth and Power of the Dog.
It will be remembered that on October 2019, production for the show halted because of a knee injury sustained by lead star John Cho while taping. Production was further halted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Cowboy Bebop stars 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. Last April, Bebop show writer and executive producer Jeff Pinkner teased that they were already working on a second season for the show.
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.
Netflix describes the series as such:
“Based on the worldwide phenomenon from Sunrise Inc., Cowboy Bebop is the jazz-inspired, genre-bending story of Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine and Radical Ed: a rag-tag crew of bounty hunters on the run from their pasts as they hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals. They’ll even save the world…for the right price.”
Source: Anime News Network