It has already been over seven months since production was temporarily suspended for Netflix‘s upcoming Cowboy Beboy due to lead star John Cho’s knee injury during filming, and now writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach has finally opened up about the upcoming live-action series adaptation, confirming that work on a potential second season has already begun.
Speaking with io9, Grillo-Marxuach has revealed that despite adding some new details to the storyline, the series will still remain faithful to the source material and will definitely include the qualities that fans have come to love about the popular anime.
“You can’t look at Cowboy Bebop and say, “Well, it’s just a take-off point. We’re going to give them different hair and different clothing, and we’re gonna call it something different. And it’s just sort of gonna be a loose thing.” He said. “If you’re doing Cowboy Bebop, you’re doing Cowboy Bebop. You know? It’s kind of like doing Star Wars.”
However, he also talked about on how fans should also expect new details from the live-action series as it will also introduce and feature new stories about the fan-favorite characters which will further expand its storyline.
“You’ve got a show where you have 26 episodes that are full of very colorful villains, very colorful stories, very colorful adversaries, bounties, and all of that,” He explained. “We’re not going to go one-to-one on all of those stories because we’re also trying to tell the broader story of Spike Spiegel and the Syndicate, Spike Spiegel and Julia, Spike Spiegel and Vicious, and all that. But we are looking at the show and saying, “Who are some of the great villains in this show, and how can we put them into this into this broader narrative?” So that we are telling both of the big stories that Cowboy Bebop tells.”
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Although production is still on hold, Grillo-Marxuach has revealed that he has already watched a cut of the first episode, teasing Cho and the cast’s performance as well as its over-the-top sets and costumes showcasing the show’s futuristic and weird setting which they took design cues from the anime.
In addition, he also hopes that Cowboy Bebop fans could also appreciate and love the series adaptation as their whole team acknowledges how important a fandom is to a show. “Everybody has a different idea of what the best version of a show is, and a lot of Cowboy Bebop fans believe that the anime is the best version of that show. We hope that we can convert them to look at our version of it, and think that it’s a wonderful translation, a wonderful addition to the original canon,”
He continued, “We’re deep enough in a world that where fandom is important to the existence of shows, that people like me don’t ever really lose sight of that. I think that there are always going to be tone-deaf reboots of things and all of that, but we’re fans. You know, we come at this as fans. We love genre, we love science fiction, and we love Cowboy Bebop.”
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The series will star John Cho (Searching) as Spike Spiegel, Mustafa Shakir (Luke Cage) as Jet Black, Daniella Pineda (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) as Faye Valentine, Alex Hassell (Suburbicon) as Vicious, and Elena Satine (Revenge) as Julia. The live-action 10-episode series will be directed by Michael Katleman and Alex Garcia Lopez with Christopher Yost (Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok) and Javier Grillo-Marxuach serving as writers. Original anime series director Shinichiro Watanabe has also signed on as a consultant.
Cowboy Bebop first premiered in 1998 and tells the story of The Bebop crew, intergalactic loners who team up to track down fugitives and turn them in for cold hard cash. Among the crew is Spike Spiegel, a hero whose cool façade hides a dark and deadly past; the pilot Jet, a bruiser of a brute who can’t wait to collect the next bounty; and Faye Valentine, a femme fatale prone to breaking hearts and separating fools from their money. Set against the backdrop of space in the year 2017, along for the ride are the brilliant, but weird, hacker Ed, and a super-genius Welsh Corgi named Ein.
The anime ran for just 26 episodes and one special in the late 1990s and later had a feature film, Cowboy Bebop: The Movie, released in 2001 and set during the series instead of serving as a follow-up.
