Saddle up, Space Cowboys. Netflix has announced the live action version their new show Cowboy Bebop finally has their Spike Spiegel. John Cho (Star Trek, Harold and Kumar) has been cast as the iconic character, known for smoking, street smarts and style. The live action version of the 1998 anime series doesn’t yet have a release date, but we’re already counting down. (3,2,1 – let’s jam!)
They’ve also cast some of the other major series roles. Mustafa Shakir (Luke Cage) will play the Bebop’s captain with a love of jazz, Jet Black. Faye Valentine, the cunning bounty hunter with a secret past, will be played by Daniella Pineda (The Originals). Rounding out today’s cast announcements, Spike’s ex-partner/arch nemesis Vicious will be played by Alex Hassell (Suburbicon).
No further information has been released as to who will play the other two major characters on the Bebop — the young, androgynous super hacker Edward Wong and her scarily intelligent, genetically engineered corgi sidekick, Ein.
The series creator Shinichiro Watanabe will serve as consultant on the series, which is a sigh of relief for those of us who are fans of the original series.
Cowboy Bebop takes place nearly 100 years in the future, when the Earth is uninhabitable, and bounty hunters (or “Cowboys”) like the ones found on the spaceship Bebop can barely scrape by. But they’ll do whatever it takes to keep running from their pasts.
You can catch the subtitled and dubbed versions of the original anime series now on Hulu.
