SPACE COWBOYS

THE BELOVED JAPANESE ANIME COWBOY BEBOP GETS A LIVE ACTION REBOOT AS A NEW NETFLIX SERIES

- BRYAN CAIRNS

ANDRE NEMEC ADOPTED a simple mission statement when it came to adapting the acclaimed Japanese anime Cowboy Bebop into a live-action space Western. The showrunner thought, “Let’s not fuck it up.” Nemec conveyed those words of wisdom to the TV series’ writers, production designers, costumers, transportation department, editors and everyone else hired for the project.

“I’ve done some adaptations before and I really wanted to live in the spirit of the anime, while breathing new storytelling into it,” Nemec (Zoo, Alias) tells SFX. “The mantra for me was to honour the spirit of the anime, and that meant a lot of different things. I began a very deep dive of looking at the storytelling of the anime, the inspirations of the anime and what really motivated them to want to tell the stories that they did and build the characters out the way they did.”

Truth be told, Nemec stumbled across Cowboy Bebop accidentally. The original run consisted of 26 episodes and debuted in 1998. But Nemec only discovered the property much later through its infectious music. Years ago, he heard the Bebop soundtrack over the radio without knowing what it actually was.

“It was this amazing, eclectic, wild mix of jazz, big songs and groovy tunes,” Nemec recalls. “I just had a moment where I was like, ‘What is this? Who is this?’ I realised that it was the soundtrack to Cowboy Bebop. I proceeded to watch Cowboy Bebop.