It’s been awhile since we’ve heard anything about the live-action movie version of Cowboy Bebop, and that’s not usually a good sign. Last we heard way back in January of 2009, Keanu Reeves was officially on board to star in an adaptation of the Japanese anime creation. Now, a year and a half later, he says not so much.
Collider talked to the One this week and he told them that the Cowboy Bebop movie is dead. Bottom line, the movie was just to expensive to make. It’s a problem anything even remotely ambitious has been running into a lot lately. Hollywood’s in serious cost-cutting mode, even though their profits are up and we live an environment where even the most poorly attended piece of crap always seems to manage to turn a profit after overseas and DVD sales totals are factored in. In a distributing environment where moneymaking is almost guaranteed, you’d think they’d be more willing to take risks, but instead it seems like Hollywood has decided to take all this as a sign that they don’t have to take risks. They seem more and more content to sit back and make easy money for making any old shit.
So nobody’s taking a risk on a big-budget Cowboy Bebop movie, even with Keanu Reeves attached as a box office draw, and now it’s dead. It’s a shame because Keanu sounded genuinely enthusiastic back when he talked about what they were going to do with it last year. Here’s how explained his take on Bebop: “It’s got a Western quality, a Western film noir aspect to it. It’s got so much style to it, and that’s part of its appeal. That kind of Old West, bordertown, low-tech science fiction aspect.” The original anime series, which debuted back in 1998 followed a group of bounty hunters traveling on a spaceship named Bebop.
