Cowboy Bebop Too Expensive to Produce

The live action adaptation of the popular anime Cowboy Bebop may have hit the skids. Actor Keanu Reeves is attached to star as the lead character Spike Spiegel in the film, and he recently spoke to MTV about the development status of the script. When producing adaptations of any sort the remake is rarely better than the original, but that’s not the case with Cowboy Bebop. According to Reeves the current script is too good to be produced.

The screenplay for Cowboy Bebop was penned by Peter Craig who described his script as “extremely faithful” to the source material. Perhaps that’s why it’s currently in rewrites? According to Reeves, when they presented a draft of the screenplay to the studio they thought it was fantastic, but explained that it would cost half a billion dollars to make! So at the moment, Craig is tweaking the story so that the production of the film doesn’t bankrupt its investors.

Reeves stated that all the influential Bebop characters will be featured in the film, spanning from “Spike to Ein.” I know there are a lot of people out there who are against Reeves portrayal of Spike. I know this because at one point I felt the same way. Physically he has the look down, and he is a serious anime fan so I don’t doubt his conviction. It sounds like they produced a script that fans would really want to see, too bad the studio is making them dumb it down. That’s not a good sign.

What do you think about Cowboy Bebop going into rewrites? Should they keep the original draft?