Netflix Produces Live-Action Cowboy Bebop Series
Netflix announced on Tuesday that it is producing a 10-episode
live-action series adaptation of the 1998 television anime Cowboy Bebop. Entertainment news
magazine Variety noted
that the series has been in the works since last year. Netflix did
not announce a release date for the series. Netflix describes the
series in above Video:
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.
The series is a
co-production between Netflix and Tomorrow
Studios, with Netflix handling physical production.
Tomorrow Studios is a partnership between producer Marty Adelstein (Prison Break, Teen Wolf) and ITV
Studios. Shinichiro Watanabe, the original anime's
director, will serve as consultant for the project. Andre Nemec, Josh
Appelbaum, Jeff Pinkner, and Scott Rosenberg of Midnight Radio are credited as
showrunners and executive producers.
Tomorrow
Studios' Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements; Yasuo Miyakawa, Masayuki Ozaki, and Shin
Sasaki of Sunrise (the studio
that animated the original series); and Tetsu
Fujimura and
Matthew Weinberg are also credited as executive producers.
Chris Yost (Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok)
will write the first episode, and is also credited as executive producer.
Variety and entertainment news website Deadline previously reported the above staff in June last year.
The original anime's director Shinichiro Watanabe commented on
the proposed Hollywood live-action film adaptation of the anime in 2014. He
said, "I'm afraid I don't know what they're thinking in Hollywood.
Apparently the project hasn't come to a stop but I don't know how it's going to
progress from here on. I hear that there are a lot of 'Hollywood' problems."
The director also said he had no interest in creating an animated Cowboy Bebop sequel
unless "I thought I could do better [than] last time. If I feel that way,
I might make more but I don't know when that would happen."
Actor Keanu Reeves said in 2013 that "Cowboy Bebop does not look like it is
going to happen with me in it." Reeves was originally slated to star in
the proposed live-action film. The American film studio Twentieth Century Fox, the production company 3 Arts
Entertainment, and Sunrise announced in
January 2009 that they would be co-producing the proposed adaptation of the
anime.
Joshua Long had
acted as a production supervisor, and Erwin Stoff, a film producer who worked
closely with Reeves on The
Matrix and A
Scanner Darkly, was also attached. The associate producers for
the film were Sunrise President Kenji Uchida, the original Cowboy
Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe, and
the original series script supervisor Keiko Nobumoto. The Sunrise Studio itself and Masahiko Minami (former Sunrise producer
and BONES studio co-founder) were both acting as production
consultants. Peter Craig was writing the
film's screenplay. Stoff had said in 2009 that the film would not be
an origin story.
The original
anime series follows the motley crew of the spaceship Bebop as it travels
throughout the solar system in search of the next job. The anime inspired Cowboy Bebop: The Movie in 2001. Funimation released the series on Blu-ray and DVD in North America in
2014, and recently screened the film in the United States in August.
The series is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year.
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