'Cowboy Bebop' Star Addresses Live-Action Adaptation

Cowboy Bebop is one of the most prolific anime series, and it's often one of the first mentioned [...]

By Nick Valdez

Cowboy Bebop is one of the most prolific anime series, and it's often one of the first mentioned when fans are asked about their favorites. So that's why fans were conflicted when a live-action adaptation was announced.

But how does Steve Blum, who portrayed Spike Spiegel in the English dub of the series, feel about the adaptation? He's hoping he can be a part of it too!

Taking to Twitter, Blum commented that he hoped the adaptation would let him do some voiceover work for it and the project would be mad to not make Blum a part of it. The English dub, starting with Blum's performance, is one of the many reasons the series is so big in the United States in the first place so it would only be right to pay tribute to it in this way.

As for the live-action project itself, not many details have been revealed since the project was first announced. All that's been confirmed so far is that Sunrise will be overlooking the production with Tomorrow Studios and will be helped in the production by Midnight Radio (Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec, Jeff Pinkner & Scott Rosenberg), Marty Adelstein, Becky Clements, and Matthew Weinberg.

The adaptation is currently scheduled to be written by Chris Yost, but there are no other details such as release date or even what the new project will be. Cowboy Bebop can work in live-action whether it's a television series or a single film, but it just needs the right amount of time, care, and money into it to succeed.

Hiring on Steve Blum to do any work on the project would certainly be a step in the right direction, and would most likely ease any fans with hang ups about live-action adaptations. But it's still too early to tell otherwise.

Cowboy Bebop was first produced by Sunrise in 1998. Directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, with scripts written by Keiko Nobumoto, character designer Toshihiro Kawamoto, and songs composed by Yoko Kanno, the series explores many existentialist philosophies as it follows the adventures of Spike Spiegel, and a group of bounty hunter misfits aboard the titular spaceship the Bebop in the year 2071.

The series premiered in Japan back in 1998, and ran for 26 episodes until 1999. It was licensed for an English language released by Bandai Entertainment and Funimation, and was the very first anime series to air on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim programming block in the United States. It's often credited by fans from the 2000s as a major "gateway" show to the world of anime overall and has gone on to major critical, cult, and commercial success.

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