Netflix’s 2021 live-action adaptation of the famed space western anime series “Cowboy Bebop” had hoped to be a franchise launcher. Instead, it became a cautionary tale about how not to adapt a beloved property.
John Cho, Mustafa Shakir and Daniella Pineda starred as three bounty hunters ready to hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals. Clocking up just one season of ten episodes, the series pulled in a woeful 47/100 from reviewers and 4.4/10 from audiences on Metacritic, with its 47% and 60% scores on Rotten Tomatoes not much better.
It wasn’t a lack of publicity either, even though Netflix held back on revealing any looks at the series until fairly late. The series was reportedly widely sampled in its initial week, but then people didn’t stick around with a whopping 59% drop in its second week.
Not helping its case was the show’s considerable expense and ultimately, it led to the streamer officially cancelling the series just three weeks after it premiered.
Now, in a new interview with Forbes, the original director of the Japanese anime series Shinichirō Watanabe revealed he stopped watching the live-action remake after just one scene because it didn’t feel like the anime classic he helped create:
“For the new Netflix live-action adaptation, they sent me a video to review and check. 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.”
John Cho said last year that he was shocked by the streamer’s decision to cut the live-action remake short as he had been “very warmed by the response [to the show]… It [the cancellation] was very shocking and I was bummed.”
