COWBOY BEBOP: Netflix Series Writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach Likens Franchise To STAR WARS

One of the most beloved and highly-rated anime series of the late ’90s, harboring an 8.9/10 score on IMDB with 95% of Google Users liking the show. The long-awaited live-action Netflix adaptation is inching closer and closer to becoming a reality, despite Spike Spiegel star Jon Cho (Harold and Kumar go to White Castle) injuring himself on set.

Despite having no release date set in stone yet (the Coronavirus can’t be helping the situation), Netflix adaptation writer Javier Grillo-Marxuach (The Middleman) recently shared comments with i09 regarding the upcoming series. With many fans worried that Cowboy Bebop may go the way of most live-action anime adaptations (The Last Airbender, Dragonball: Evolution, Death Note) and lack quality, the writer addresses just similar and different the upcoming Netflix series will be from the precious source material.

“We ain’t playing Bebop, Bebop is playing us. You can’t look at Cowboy Bebop and say, ‘Well, it’s just a take-off point. We’re going to give them different hair and different clothing, and we’re gonna call it something different. And it’s just sort of gonna be a loose thing. If you’re doing Cowboy Bebop, you’re doing Cowboy Bebop. You know? It’s kind of like doing Star Wars.”

After likening the anime franchise to that of the decade-spanning Star Wars films, Grillo-Marchaux went on to explain his approach to the narrative and how he plans to give the both the heroes and the villains the justice the fans demand.

“Being a sci-fi nerd in the ‘90s meant you’d sit there and watch a show, and for the first act, you’re usually just getting information you already know. Flash forward to like almost 30 years later and TV is weird now, like TV is batshit crazy right now. It is hard to tell people how weird Game of Thrones is to me, having grown up in a world where the thing most like Game of Thrones was a show called Wizards and Warriors that was on CBS in the late ‘80s. We can be weird. We can look at anime and take design cues out of anime.

We don’t want the fans of the show to look at it and say that we failed them or we failed the original. You’ve got a show where you have 26 episodes that are full of very colorful villains, very colorful stories, very colorful adversaries, bounties, and all of that. We’re not going to go one-to-one on all of those stories because we’re also trying to tell the broader story of Spike Spiegel and the Syndicate, Spike Spiegel and Julia, Spike Spiegel and Vicious, and all that. But we are looking at the show and saying, ‘Who are some of the great villains in this show, and how can we put them into this into this broader narrative?’ So that we are telling both of the big stories that Cowboy Bebop tells.”

Further breaking down the aspects which make Cowboy Bebop unique, the writer continues by citing the influences that the anime has taken from music, television, and pop culture in general. He also makes the important point that not everyone is going to be looking for the same result from his adaptation. Though he recognizes its impossible to please everyone, Javier Grillo-Marchaux hopes that fans will see the new series as an addition to the franchise rather than a replacement.

“You’ve got an entity that is very much a kind of gathering together of influences that were very important in post-war Japan: jazz, American pop culture, the whole sort-of cowboy thing, reality television. So, you’re looking at a show that’s already a commentary on the influence of American pop culture with Japanese culture in the future, in space. And then we’re taking that and then we’re…trying to translate that not just in English, but also a format that is not the original format of the show. Spike Spiegel has to be Asian. Like, you can’t Scarlett Johansson this shit. We are making a show that takes place in a future that is multicultural, that is extraordinarily integrated and where those things are the norm.

Everybody has a different idea of what the best version of a show is, and a lot of Cowboy Bebop fans believe that the anime is the best version of that show. We hope that we can convert them to look at our version of it, and think that it’s a wonderful translation, a wonderful addition to the original canon. We’re deep enough in a world that where fandom is important to the existence of shows, that people like me don’t ever really lose sight of that. I think that there are always going to be tone-deaf reboots of things and all of that, but we’re fans. You know, we come at this as fans. We love genre, we love science fiction, and we love Cowboy Bebop.”

Cowboy Bebop is expected to premiere sometime in 2021, but no exact release date has been set.