Casting Bebop | Jeff Harris, August 8, 2008

The Music: Yoko Kanno and the Seatbelts must provide the music for the film. Anything less, and it's not Bebop. Yeah, some old jazz standards from the likes of Coltrane, Parker, Davis, Mingus, and Quincy Jones would be welcome, but the majority of the music, whether it's remakes of the original tunes from the series or entirely new compositions, should be composed by Yoko Kanno. The Effects: For the love of all things decent, they need to get ZOIC Studios creating the look and feel of Cowboy Bebop. They've done wonders on Firefly, Serenity, and Battlestar Galactica, and I feel they could do the Bebop, the Swordfish, the futuristic western-like settings, and everything else that the series made fun. Industrial Light and Magic did wonders on Star Wars and a bulk of the sci-fi films from the 70s, 80s, and much of the 90s, but Cowboy Bebop isn't Star Wars. Some would want WETA Digital, but I've yet to see them work on something heavily sci-fi in origin. Yes, they can do the creatures of Narnia and Middle Earth, but Bebop isn't populated with those creatures. Everybody's human. ZOIC would be perfect on Cowboy Bebop. The Director/Writer: In the end, the director has the vision of what the film will look like. They will be responsible for how the film is presented and created. They also have to be a part of the creative process of the film as well, including overseeing (and possibly contributing) to the script. There are three individuals who would work wonders on the Cowboy Bebop film. Robert Rodriguez is a one-man operation. Ever since he shot El Mariachi on a regular handheld, he has been a movie-making machine responsible for the Spy Kids and El Mariachi trilogies, Sin City, and soon a new Red Sonja. He has utilized digital filmmaking to an artform creating elements out of nothing and creating a lot of friends and admirers in the process. A lot of elements from Desperado were seen in Asteroid Blues, the first episode of Cowboy Bebop, so it would be karmic for Mr. Rodriguez to be connected to the Cowboy Bebop film. Another guy who would work wonders on Cowboy Bebop is Joss Whedon. The creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly has become a fan favorite over the last decade. Firefly was the first true space western created for American audiences, and it owes a lot to Outlaw Star and Cowboy Bebop. Joss's characters and situations are so nuanced and well-timed that it seems so natural and not stilted. These are characters you can believe in in worlds you can imagine as existing, and Cowboy Bebop needs such a visionary helming the film. And considering he's back on good terms with Fox after publicly vowing never to work for Fox again (he's working with Fox on the Buffy comics, based on his creations but owned by Fox, and a new series called Dollhouse), he'd be perfect. An unlikely director for the Cowboy Bebop movie would be Shinichiro Watanabe. It wouldn't be all that unprecedented for a creator to be involved in the direction of a project they created in another medium. Frank Miller, creator of Sin City, was a co-director of the theatrical version alongside Robert Rodriguez. Certainly that experiment proved that the creator of a project should be hands on with the adaptation of their original series. Otherwise, we'd have another Aeon Flux, Steel, or Fist of the North Star, and we don't want that. If you have any combination of any of the suggestions I've made, you've got a great movie ahead of you. I'm sure they could make a movie without them. It just wouldn't be a good movie.