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Netflix's Live-Action Cowboy Bebop Show Writer Teases Similarities, Changes
posted on by Alex Mateo
Science fiction news website io9 posted an update on Netflix's live-action adaptation of Sunrise's Cowboy Bebop anime on Tuesday after speaking with writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach. Grillo-Marxuach confirmed that Ein will be a corgi, just as in the original anime. He also told io9 that the show's style and substance will be loyal, saying "If you're doing Cowboy Bebop, you're doing Cowboy Bebop."
The writer also revealed a few changes, such as the show toning down Faye's costume for Netflix. Although the characters will still smoke, the show will not glamorize it as much.
Grillo-Marxuach teased that he has written for two of the show's villains so far, including “one of the standouts” from the anime. He told io9 that the show will tell the broader story of the series' characters. In addition, Grillo-Marxuach is looking at the anime's villains and thinking about how he can "put them into this into this broader narrative." He revealed that he has seen a cut of the show's first episode.
Grillo-Marxuach said that he does not think any episodes will launch until the full first season is ready because the season is meant to be watched together. He claimed that there are no plans to end the show after a set number of episodes.
Netflix describes the series:
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 stars Cho as Spike, Mustafa Shakir as Jet, Daniella Pineda as Faye, Alex Hassell as Vicious, and Elena Satine as Julia. Netflix posted a "Behind the Scenes" video on October 7 to mark the start of production.
Writer and executive producer Jeff Pinkner teased in April that the show's staff is planning a second season. Pinker said that the project's one-hour episode length allows them to "really tell stories set in that world in a way that hopefully will not only delight the fans of anime but expose a whole bunch of new people to the world of Cowboy Bebop, the awesome work of Yoko Kanno." The production had not previously announced that a second season is planned, nor that Yoko Kanno, the musical composer of the original Sunrise anime series and film, is involved in the live-action series. While Japan was under a state of emergency in April, Kanno gathered her Cowboy Bebop musicians online to collaborate on music while staying at home.
The production on the first season was on hold in New Zealand after lead actor John Cho's on-set knee injury in October, followed by a shutdown due to the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19).
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, producer for the live-action One Piece project) and ITV Studios. Shinichiro Watanabe, the original anime's director, is serving 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) is writing the series, and is credited as executive producer.
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 screened the film in the United States in 2018, the 20th anniversary of the original series.
Source: io9 (Beth Elderkin) via Dark Horizons
