Following our first look at Netflix’s upcoming live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop last month, Entertainment Weekly has an exclusive new look at the production with an additional photograph of Bebop’s main character Spike.
The newly released photo shows Spike Spiegel (John Cho) in his signature blue leisure suit, caught in the suave motion of taking off his shades. It looks like he’s on the Tijuana asteroid colony, the setting of the anime’s first episode. The original ‘90s anime saw locales with distinct human cultures spread across the geography of the solar system, from the moons of the gas giants to the rocky inner planets.
Cho, who’s 49, shared his fears of playing Spike last month. Best known for his work in Harold & Kumar and JJ Abrams’ Star Trek reboots, the actor Cho told Vulture.
“[T]he amount of thought and worry and effort and number of days I’ve logged thinking about Spike is now equaling the fear I have about the reaction… I also thought that that was a recipe for encouraging unflattering comparisons. How could you do it better? You can’t. You have to do something a little different.”
Those changes may be as big as plot beats and as small as Spike’s hair, a gravity-defying green from in the original. Interestingly though, Spike’s original design by anime director Shinichiro Watanabe was based on the legendary Japanese actor Yūsaku Matsuda, who passed away in 1989.
Cowboy Bebop premieres on Netflix on November 19th. The original anime is available to stream on Funimation and Hulu.
