Cowboy Bebop co-creator Shinichiro Watanabe shares his reaction to the live-action Netflix series starring John Cho as Spike Spiegel.
Netflix’s live-action adaptation of the iconic anime series Cowboy Bebop was heavily hyped prior to its release, but the series received lackluster reviews, and Netflix officially cancelled it soon after. While speaking with Forbes, Shinichiro Watanabe, who directed the original Cowboy Bebop anime series, shared his reaction to the live-action Netflix adaptation.
“For the new Netflix live-action adaptation, they sent me a video to review and check,” Watanabe explained. “It started with a scene in a casino, which made it very tough for me to continue. I stopped there and so only saw that opening scene. It was clearly not Cowboy Bebop and I realized at that point that if I wasn’t involved, it would not be Cowboy Bebop. I felt that maybe I should have done this. Although the value of the original anime is somehow far higher now.” Many Cowboy Bebop fans had a similar reaction to the Netflix series, which was a shame considering how passionate the cast and crew were about the series.
John Cho, who starred as Spike Spiegel, had said that everyone was “in agreement that we wanted to honor the material and also contribute something original. What we talked about more than anything else was, ‘Is this in the spirit of Cowboy Bebop?’” Cowboy Bebop showrunner André Nemec had “big plans” for a second season, so news of its cancellation came as a surprise to Cho. “I put a lot of my life into it,” Cho said. “I’d gotten injured shooting that show and so I took a year off because of the surgery and devoted myself to rehab, came back and finished the show. It was this huge mountain for me to climb, healing from that injury. I felt good about myself as a result. We also shot the show in New Zealand, so my family moved there. It was just a huge event in my life and it was suddenly over. It was very shocking and I was bummed.” You can check out a review of the series from our own Alex Maidy right here.
Did the live-action Cowboy Bebop series get treated unfairly or was it Cowboy Bebop in name only, as Watanabe suggests?