Tuesday 16 March 2021

Shooting on first season of live-action COWBOY BEBOP wraps

Filming has wrapped on the first season of Cowboy Bebop, Netflix's live-action remake of the hugely successful anime series of the same name.


It's been a very long road getting to this point. The original show ran for 26 episodes back in 1998, airing to massive critical acclaim. Unusually for such a popular franchise, the show was not added to in sequels, remakes or spin-offs, with its sole concession to franchise-dom being a single spin-off animated movie in 2001 and some manga spin-offs.

Netflix announced it was developing a live-action show in June 2017. Shooting began in October 2019 but was almost immediately - eleven days later! - shut down after star John Cho suffered a serious on-set injury to his foot. Between Cho's injury and the COVID-19 pandemic, shooting was delayed by almost a full year, only resuming in September 2020.

Fortunately, Bebop is shooting in New Zealand, which has handled the COVID pandemic better than almost any other country, and there were no further delays in shooting. Indeed, the show has wrapped earlier than some were anticipating.

The series is now in-post, but it looks pretty good that Cowboy Bebop could air well before the end of 2021. Whether it's any good or not is another question, but the cast looks solid and original composter Yoko Kanno is on board for the remake, so we can but hope.

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