Cowboy Bebop Writer Spills the Jam
3. 2. 1. Let’s jam!
Is it safe to say reboots, remakes, and live action adaptations are the natural path of most media? Two years ago The Verge told us Netflix was working on a ten episode series of a live action version of Cowboy Bebop, which just so happened to be the 20th anniversary. And now Javier Grillo-Marxuach who is one of the writers for the show, sat down with i09 to provide us with an update and a little more information on our favorite spacefaring bounty hunters.
The original show was 26 episodes at 22 minutes a piece. This time around we’re only getting 10 episodes for the first season but they will be an hour long . With this extra time they will be able to go deeper into all of your favorite characters. This isn’t meant as some sort of replacement but rather a pulling back of the curtain to reveal an expansion of the canon.
“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.”
In regards to the issues with white washing such as Dragonball Evolution, Death Note and Ghost in the shell, Grillo-Marxauch said “Spike Spiegel has to be Asian. Like, you can’t Scarlett Johansson this shit.” Netflix easily avoided those cries of whitewashing by picking South Korean actor, John Cho (Star Trek) to take on the lead role of the main man, Spike Spiegel. He’ll be sharing the screen with Mustafa Shakir (Luke Cage), Daniella Pineda (Jurassic World) and Alex Hassell (The Boys).
Unfortunately during filming back in October 2019, Cho injured his knee so badly that it required surgery and would take 7 to 9 months to heal. Obviously this set production back a while. But the timing works out for Cho since the series is being filmed in New Zealand, and according to The Guardian, New Zealand hasn't recorded any new cases of Covid-19 for 11 straight days as on June 2nd.
We wish Cho a speedy recovery and look forward to any new updates that may come out. Cowboy Bebop is one of the greats and although it has been pushed back until 2021, we’re really looking forward to spending some quality time with it in live action form. We can’t wait to…”see you space cowboy.” Now queue up that jazz!