Fox Officially Greenlights Keanu’s Cowboy Bebop

If you were one of those people still hoping that Keanu Reeves might leave your beloved “Cowboy Bebop” alone, then tough luck, folks, because the trades have made it official: Fox studios is producing a live-action movie version of “Bebop” to star Keanu Reeves as Spike Spiegel, with Peter Craig currently writing the script. Sunrise president Kenji Uchida, Shinichiro Watanabe, and Keiko Nobumoto will produce the movie for the Japanese side.

THR has more on the plot:

One of the big titles in anime, “Bebop” is set in a time where “astral gates” make interstellar travel possible. Humanity, decimated by a lunar explosion resulting from a gate accident, spread out across the solar system, as did crime, which gave rise to the use of bounty hunters.

Reeves would play Spike Spiegel, a bounty hunter and former member of a crime syndicate. Spiegel, along with Jet Black, a fellow bounty hunter and former cop, are the two pilots of the spaceship Bebop.

On the bright side, at least Reeves has shown a lot of enthusiasm for the project, and was the one actively pursuing it and not brought onto the project. That should mean something for the quality of the picture, if nothing else.

Below: “See, they’re cowboys, in outer space. Whoa! That’s like totally cool, right? I mean, whoa!”