Keanu Reeves is one of the most experienced actors in the Hollywood industry. However, even the John Wick megastar would’ve been up for a challenge if he took the role of a fan-favorite anime character in a live-action series. Reeves was in contention for the Cowboy Bebop adaptation but that didn’t pan out due to budgetary issues.
Cowboy Bebop live-action became a part of the rumor mill in 2008. Director and Writer Shinichirō Watanabe eventually confirmed his involvement and it was subsequently followed by Keanu Reeves being cast for the lead role of Spike Spiegel. However, he wasn’t fully committed to the project because of his hectic schedule.
Fast-forward to 2021, Cowboy Bebop was released in November and canceled a month later. The loose adaptation of the anime series was panned by fans and critics alike. Keanu Reeves seems to have dodged a bullet.
Why Keanu Reeves Couldn’t Play His Dream Role in Cowboy Bebop Live-Action?
Cowboy Bebeop was released in 1998. The anime debuted for English audiences in 2001, where it immediately gained traction. It had relatively few episodes compared to other anime, so producer Erwin Stoff jumped at the opportunity of developing a live-action adaptation.
Stoff stated to IfMagazine that their “foremost concern is going to be a real degree of faithfulness to the tone of the movie, to the mix of genres.” The live-action was scheduled to premier on FOX. Unfortunately, the plan kept being stalled after Keanu Reeves was cast in the series.
Reeves later revealed in a Reddit ‘Ask Me Anything’ thread that the Cowboy Bebop adaptation was not going to happen with him. He had also started working on his film Bill & Ted 3, making him less committed to the other project, according to the Reddit thread:
“‘Cowboy Bebop’ does not look like it is going to happen with me in it. The script that was written was great and amazing, but it would cost like half a billion dollars to make it, and while I wished and hoped I would have done that project, we are working on trying to get ‘Bill & Ted 3.’ There’s a script and we are trying to put it together.”
Instead of Erwin Stoff and FOX being the publisher, the Cowboy Bebop Netflix live-action was developed by Christopher Yost and Andre Nemec. The 2021 series consisting of 10 episodes starred John Cho as Spike Spiegel, Daniella Pineda as Faye Valentine, and Mustafa Shakir as Jet Black, but failed to get good responses.
Keanu Reeves Was ‘Incredibly Enthusiastic’ About Playing Spike Spiegel
Keanu Reeves was heavily vested in the Cowboy Bebop project. He only prioritized Bill & Ted 3 after knowing that the entire live-action series was taking too much time to get the green light since it required 500 million in production costs.
It was Steve Blum, who voiced the character of Spike Spiegel in the English version of Cowboy Bebop, who revealed the inner struggle that Reeves was undergoing at that time. He mentioned how the John Wick actor was attached to the anime live-action during an interview with Fandom:
“He (Keanu Reeves) was incredibly enthusiastic about it. I believe he actually optioned the rights to the movie. He said at that time that there’s this beautiful script for it.. but it would cost half a billion dollars to produce. His concern was that it just wouldn’t get greenlit in time for him to be able to do his own stunts without being an old man.”
The live-action series released on Netflix was a critical failure for not sticking to the source material. Shinichirō Watanabe thought it would’ve been better if he was involved in the scriptwriting. This is one of the main reasons why One Piece Live-Action, which incorporated multiple changes by the mangaka Eiichiro Oda, was a huge success compared to Cowboy Bebop.
