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Keanu Reeves: Live-Action Cowboy Bebop is in Rewriting

Actor Keanu Reeves (The Matrix, Animatrix, Johnny Mnemonic) told MTV News that the proposed live-action Cowboy Bebop film project is currently being rewritten. During a press event for The Private Lives of Pippa Lee film, he said, "There's a draft of the script, but the writer did such a great job [that] in order to make the movie, you would need half a billion dollars. […] So the studio went, 'This movie is fantastic and it would cost half a billion dollars. So he's doing a rewrite." Reeves added that the producers are "just trying to pull it back" in scope, and "the only challenge was to make a satisfying western narrative."

Reeves also indicated that "everyone is in there" from the main characters of Shinichiro Watanabe and Sunrise's Cowboy Bebop anime series. Peter Craig is writing the screenplay for the American film studio Twentieth Century Fox, the production Company 3 Arts Entertainment, and Sunrise. Reeves is slated to star. Joshua Long is acting as a production supervisor, and Erwin Stoff, a film producer who worked closely with Reeves on The Matrix and A Scanner Darkly, is also attached. The associate producers are 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) are both acting as production consultants.

Source: MTV Splash Page

Image © Sunrise Inc.