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Live-Action Cowboy Bebop Delayed But Akira is Still Happening
By Yung Namahage • 4 years ago

Surely I'm not the only one that's been looking forward to Netflix's upcoming live-action series based on Cowboy Bebop. Sure, their track record when handling adaptations of anime & manga hasn't been great, but the promising cast and involvement of series creator Shinichiro Watanabe couldn't help but make me at least a little excited for it. A video released by Netflix when development commenced a few weeks ago gave the impression that they were taking this adaptation seriously. Look how perfectly they cast Ein!



This only made it all the more painful to hear that star John Cho, playing the Bebop's own smooth bounty hunter with a dark past Spike Spiegel, was involved in an incident on set in New Zealand that left him with an injured knee, during the filming of a "routine and well-rehearsed scene." Cho was taken back to Los Angeles in order to recieve surgery & recuperate and Netflix decided to keep him on instead of having to recast the series' protagonist.


The good news here is that this is a sign that the Harold & Kumar star is a great fit for the role, or else Netflix easily could've let someone else play Spike so they can finish filming the series on schedule. The bad news, however, is that Cho will be rehabilitating for the best part of a year, and production may be on hold up until next Summer.


Speaking of upcoming live-action adaptations of sci-fi anime, remember Taika Waititi's Akira? It got put on hold when the Jojo Rabbit director returned to Marvel to film the next Thor movie, but Waititi reassures fans that he does have plans to make it somewhere down the line, around the "tail end" of Thor: Love and Thunder, which is pencilled for a November 2021 release date. 


It's a shame that it'll be a while until we get to see either project, but hopefully they'll be worth the wait. Do you think Netflix will get Cowboy Bebop right? Is Akira safe in Waititi's hands? Let us know what you think!