'Cowboy Bebop' Art Imagines John Cho's Spike Makeover

Netflix is ushering in a new era of anime licensing and production in order to keep on the same [...]

By Nick Valdez

Netflix is ushering in a new era of anime licensing and production in order to keep on the same growth track they began last year, and one of the biggest announcements is that they have licensed the live-action Cowboy Bebop TV series that has been floating around for quite a while. What's even gotten more attention than that initial announcement, naturally, was that John Cho would be portrayal the main character, Spike Spiegel.

Cho's casting as the series' lead has been met with both hype and ire, and one fan went the extra mile and imagined just how he'd look as Spike in the series. Though they may change his look in the series, it's pretty difficult to see someone else bringing Spike to life now.

Artist Nikki Dawes (who you can find at the link here) shared the above take on John Cho as Spike, and it's quite a great argument for why he will be portraying the character. If Cho looks this good in art, there's so much potential for how he'll be in the full series. Fans are certainly able to imagine Cho in the role now that there's this great art to bounce off of.

John Cho has been confirmed as the live-action Spike Spiegel alongside other notable additions to the main cast including Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine, and Alex Hassell as Vicious. Fans of the original series are all in on the cast so far, but are currently waiting for confirmations of Ed and Ein's casting before really boarding the hype train.

The new Cowboy Bebop live-action series will be a co-production between Netflix and Tomorrow Studios. The series has been confirmed to run for 10 episodes, and Alex Garcia Lopez (Marvel's Daredevil) will direct the first two episodes. Christopher Yost (Thor: Ragnarok) has been confirmed to write the first episode.

Director of the original series, Shinichiro Watanabe, will be serving as a consultant on the new project. Andre Nemec, Josh Appelbaum, Jeff Pinkner, and Scott Rosenberg of Midnight Radio will serve as executive producers, and Yasuo Miyakawa, Masayuki Ozaki, and Shin Sasaki from the original anime's studio Sunrise will also executive produce as well.

Netflix officially describes the new series as such, "Based on the worldwide phenomenon from Sunrise Inc., Cowboy Bebop is the jazz-inspired, genre-bending story of 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."

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.

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