Cowboy Bebop

Live-action Cowboy Bebop nixed by Netflix after one season

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“See you, Space Cowboy.” After only one season, Netflix has chosen not to renew the live-action Cowboy Bebop series as a result of low ratings and declining viewership according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Only 10 episodes aired on the streaming-service exclusive adaptation of the 1998 anime, the first of which premiered on November 19th, 2021.

High expectations from fans over the cast and faithfulness to the original content crashed following concerns over quality of the computer effects, character dialogue and set dressings. Rotten Tomatoes, the online ratings aggregating web site, reports that 46% of critics liked Cowboy Bebop compared to 56% of regular viewers. Cowboy Bebop was watched globally with 73,840,000 viewing hours and is still in Netflix’s Top Ten List.

Netflix had recruited the anime director Shinichiro Watanabe and music composer Yoko Kanno to work on the new show, giving fans comfort that Netflix was taking this reboot seriously.

A trio of bounty hunters called “cowboys” — Spike Spiegel, Jet Black and Faye Valentine, enlist the help of brilliant hacker Edward and intelligent corgi Ein, to crew of the spacecraft Bebop as they navigate the fringes of the galaxy in search of criminals to rope in for financial rewards.

The cast in Cowboy Bebop featured John Cho as ex-criminal-now-bounty-hunter Spike Spiegel, Mustafa Shakir as former space police officer Jet Black, Daniella Pineda as the dangerous and amnesiac gambler Faye Valentine, and Eden Perkins as the young computer whiz Edward.

Sources: The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix, Rotten Tomatoes

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