With the second season of the live-action One Piece newly arrived on Netflix, the team behind that successful series, Tomorrow Studios, has its next anime adaptation in mind. However, since Tomorrow Studios was also behind Netflix’s unloved live-action Cowboy Bebop adaptation, fans might feel some trepidation—because this next live-action project will also be based on a cult anime from creator Shinichiro Watanabe: Samurai Champloo.
Fortunately, Tomorrow Studios’ Marty Adelstein and Becky Clements have clearly learned from the past and will be applying those lessons to Samurai Champloo. As Variety reports, having One Piece creator Eiichiro Oda so closely involved in the Netflix show has been enormously helpful, not just in helping shape the series but in assuring fans that it has his all-important stamp of approval.
That’s why it’s so crucial for Watanabe to be involved in Samurai Champloo. He wasn’t part of Cowboy Bebop and had just about the same reaction to it as many fans did. In 2023, he did an interview where he didn’t mince words about it.
“For the new Netflix live-action adaptation, they sent me a video to review and check. It started with a scene in a casino, which made it very tough for me to continue. I stopped there and so only saw that opening scene,” he said. “It was clearly not Cowboy Bebop and I realized at that point that if I wasn’t involved, it would not be Cowboy Bebop. I felt that maybe I should have done this. Although the value of the original anime is somehow far higher now.”
Variety says that Watanabe would be attached to Samurai Champloo as a producer, and it sounds like there are no hard feelings after Cowboy Bebop.
“We had dinner with [Watanabe] in Japan and said, if we move forward on doing Samurai Champloo, we really want you to be a part of the creative,” Clements explained to the trade. “We were thrilled that he was willing to do that.”
So far there’s no network attached, but Clements said there’s been interest; you have to assume Netflix is on the list. Variety notes, “The adaptation will retain the core elements fans love while updating the material for a contemporary television audience. Clements said music will be central to the process—the original anime’s hip-hop-inflected score was a defining characteristic—and that the studio plans to bring in a major recording artist early to help establish the show’s sound.”
Samurai Champloo is an on-the-road adventure set in a version of Edo-period Japan where, yes, hip-hop is a thing. Are you excited to see it make the leap to live action?
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