After a horror injury to star John Cho delayed filming, and then the coronavirus pandemic put the entire world on hold, Netflix’s live-action remake of Cowboy Bebop has finally finished filming.
Following a post on Instagram by Daniella Pineda (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom), who is playing Faye Valentine in the remake, Netflix confirmed the end of filming to Deadline. It marks the end of a long effort to bring Hajime Yatate’s sci-fi anime to life, which was announced back in 2017.
“Season 1 of Cowboy Bebop is finally, finished,” Pineda wrote.
Filming originally began in the middle of 2019, and Netflix published behind the scenes videos as part of their promotional round. But the knee injury to Cho, which required surgery back in the United States, put filming back by around 7 to 9 months. (Three episodes had reportedly been finished by the time of the injury, according to those on set.)
All production then came to a halt because of the coronavirus pandemic, although Cowboy Bebop, along with Amazon’s upcoming Lord of the Rings TV series, was given an exemption by the New Zealand government to resume filming last year.
Those exemptions, which included sequels for James Cameron’s Avatar series, allowed over 200 foreign staff plus almost 40 family members to continue working in the country from September.
Understandably, there’s no launch date for Cowboy Bebop outside of a broad “2021”. It can take a few months just to edit footage after the end of filming, so there’s still a good chance we’ll see the series sometime in the back half of the year. Writers have already begun work on a second season.
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