John Cho to star in Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop

Updated 06-04-19 | 08-50 AM | Staff Reporter

Reading time: 3 mins

John Cho will star in Netflix’s live action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop.

The series, announced last year, is a new take on the jazz-inspired, genre-bending story of Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine and Radical Ed: a rag-tag crew of bounty hunters on the run from their pasts as they hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals. They’ll even save the world… for the right price.

The hit Japanese anime first debuted back in 1998, directed by Shinichirō Watanabe and written by Keiko Nobumoto. The Western, sci-fi noir went on to become one of the most acclaimed anime ever made, spawning British dubs, two manga series and a film, and is regarded as one of the main gateways to anime for international audiences.

A co-production with Tomorrow Studios, Netflix’s live action version of the series is already a hotly anticipated prospect, particularly with Watanabe on board as a consultant. Now, that prospect just heated up further with the news that John Cho will lead the cast.

Cho will star as Spike, an “impossibly cool bounty hunter with a deadly smile, a wry wit, and style to spare”. Cho is best known for his role in the Star Trek movie reboots, as well as the Harold and Kumar france and the recent hit film Searching.

He will be joined by Mustafa Shakir as Spike’s ex-cop partner, Jet, who was one of the few honest police officers in the solar system before a betrayal robbed him of all that he loved. A jazz fan and Captain of the Bebop, he has been forced into a life of hunting bounties to put food on the table. Shakir is no stranger to Netflix, having starred in Season 2 of Luke Cage.

They are joined by Daniella Pineda (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom) as Faye Valentine, a bold, brash and unpredictable bounty hunter, who suffers from amnesia after years of being cryogenically frozen, and Alex Hassell (Amazon’s The Boys) as Vicious, Spike’s arch-enemy and the Syndicate’s most notorious hitman.

Casting for Radical Ed has not yet been confirmed.

Christopher Yost (Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok) will write the first episode and exec-produce, alongside Andre Nemec, Josh Appelbaum, Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg of Midnight Radio, who are also showrunners. Other EPs include Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements of Tomorrow Studios (Snowpiercer, Good Behavior), Yasuo Miyakawa, Masayuki Ozaki, and Shin Sasaki of Sunrise Inc, plus Tetsu Fujimura and Matthew Weinberg.

Netflix orders live action Cowboy Bebop series

28th November 2018

Netflix is turning Cowboy Bebop into a new live action series.

Based on the worldwide phenomenon from Sunrise Inc., Cowboy Bebop is the jazz-inspired, genre-bending story of Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Faye Valentine and Radical Ed: a rag-tag crew of bounty hunters on the run from their pasts as they hunt down the solar system’s most dangerous criminals. They’ll even save the world… for the right price.

The hit Japanese anime first debuted back in 1998, directed by Shinichirō Watanabe and written by Keiko Nobumoto. The Western, sci-fi noir went on to become one of the most acclaimed anime ever made, spawning British dubs, two manga series and a film, and is regarded as one of the main gateways to anime for international audiences.

“Worthy of a place in the pantheon of Firefly and Star Trek,” is how we described in our review of the series, which is available in full on Netflix UK.

Now, Netflix is adapting the anime into a live action series. A co-production with Tomorrow Studios (a partnership between Marty Adelstein and ITV Studios), Netflix will handle physical production, with Andre Nemec, Josh Appelbaum, Jeff Pinkner and Scott Rosenberg of Midnight Radio aboard as exec-producers and showrunners. Also attached as Executive Producers are Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements of Tomorrow Studios (Snowpiercer, Good Behavior), Yasuo Miyakawa, Masayuki Ozaki, and Shin Sasaki of Sunrise Inc; Tetsu Fujimura and Matthew Weinberg, plus Christopher Yost (Thor: The Dark World, Thor: Ragnarok), who will write the first episode.

Netflix has ordered 10 episodes in total, with Watanabe to serve as a consultant on the project.