Cowboy Bebop Live-Action Movie is Coming

It’s definitely good to be a Japanese anime fan nowadays. With “Robotech”, “Akira”, and “Ghost in the Shell” already gearing up for the big Hollywood treatment (with very notable names behind them, to boot!), fans of “Cowboy Bebop” can expect to see their show turned into a live-action movie sometime very soon. I’ve seen the “Bebop” movie, but not the series, so I don’t really have a firm grasp on the series’ universe. From what I saw, it’s an interesting series, and could make for a good show. Kind of like Joss Whedon’s “Serenity”, actually.

IfMagazine has your “Bebop” movie news:

We caught up with producer-extraordinaire Erwin Stoff at the NBC TCAs where he was promoting his upcoming updated-David-and-Goliath-based show KINGS. When asked about other projects he is currently working on, Stoff, let slip some very juicy news about a very beloved anime franchise.

“I’m developing COWBOY BEBOP for Fox, but doing it as a live-action film, so I’m working on that at the moment,” Stoff tells iF. “I’m really excited to be working on it, and it’s in the really early stages. We just signed it the other day.”

Before any of you BEBOP fanboys/fangirls get your skivvies in a twist about yet another questionable anime-to-human adaptation (see: DRAGONBALL), iF made sure to get an oath of fidelity to the original material from Stoff.

“I have such an enormous admiration for its creators, that our first and foremost concern is going to be a real degree of faithfulness to the tone of the movie, to the mix of genres, and so on and so forth,” he says. “When I met with them in Japan, one of the first things that I brought up was the experience that we had on A SCANNER DARKLY, and how hard we worked to remain faithful to Philip K. Dick, and that was our big concern here.”

As mentioned, just imagine “Serenity”, and you basically have your “Cowboy Bebop” film. It’ll be interesting to find out if Whedon was inspired by “Bebop” when he did “Firefly” the TV show, and then later “Serenity” the movie…