Image via Netflix
© https://manglobe/Shimoigusa%20Champloos
Entertainment news website Variety reported on Tuesday that Tomorrow Studios (live-action adaptations of One Piece and Cowboy Bebop), a partnership between producer Marty Adelstein (Prison Break, Teen Wolf) and ITV Studios, is working on a live-action adaptation of Shinichirō Watanabe and Manglobe’s Samurai Champloo television anime. Series creator Watanabe (director of the Cowboy Bebop and Lazarus) is attached to the project.
According to Variety, the project is in early development, and Tomorrow Studios has not yet taken it to networks, although it has received “a lot of incoming calls” about Samurai Champloo. The adaptation will retain the core elements fans love while updating the material for a contemporary television audience. Live-action One Piece and Cowboy Bebop executive producer Becky Clements told Variety that Tomorrow Studios plans to bring in a “major recording artist early to help establish the show’s sound” since the original had a hip-hop score as a defining feature.
Although Tomorrow Studio’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop was canceled, Clements acknowledged to Variety that Watanabe was less involved creatively on that series.
The story centers on Mugen, a wild, womanizing warrior in historical Japan. He encounters a disciplined, yet master-less, samurai named Jin when a ditzy waitress named Fuu saves both from execution after a swordfight. The reluctant traveling companions agree to help Fuu search for a mysterious samurai “who smells of sunflowers.” Their journey only gets stranger going forward — all to a hip-hop soundtrack and a storytelling style that considers no samurai drama cliché sacred.
The original anime debuted in May 2004, and it had 26 episodes.
Geneon Entertainment released the anime in North America in 2005 and 2006. Funimation later rereleased the anime on home video, including Blu-ray Disc. Adult Swim aired the series in 2005. Crunchyroll is streaming the anime.
Tomorrow Studios produced Netflix’s live-action One Piece series and the live-action adaptation of Sunrise’s Cowboy Bebop anime. The live-action One Piece series debuted exclusively on Netflix in August 2023. The second season premiered on Netflix on Tuesday. The first two episodes are playing in over 200 theaters in Canada, the United States, and Japan on the same day. Netflix debuted the first season of the live-action Cowboy Bebop in November 2021, but canceled it soon after in December 2021.
Source: Variety (Kennedy French)
