News > Keanu Reeves eyes 'Cowboy Bebop'

Keanu Reeves who is already well known for staring in major sci-fi films is looking yet again to make his fans happy by tackling "Cowboy Bebop."  MTV sat down with the star and discussed what he thought of the role and if he was into it. 

“Oh yeah, cool,” he said when I asked him about the flick recently. “We’re trying to do that.”

As fans of the Japanese classic TV series know, “Bebop” follows a crew of bounty hunters traveling around the universe in the year 2071. Reeves hopes to play Spike Spiegel, one of these futuristic cowboys forced to pick up the slack after a population crash and hyperspace gateways have left law-enforcement unable to capture many of the galaxy’s most ruthless criminals.

“It’s got a Western quality, a Western film noir aspect to it,” Reeves said of why he’s such a big fan of Shinichiro Watanabe and Keiko Nobumoto’s groundbreaking series. “It’s got so much style to it, and that’s part of its appeal. That kind of Old West, bordertown, low-tech science fiction aspect.”

Reeves revealed that this outline for the flick is currently focusing on the origins of the fictional “Bebop” drug developed by the military, which provides its users with a brief surge of superhuman reflexes and awareness. “We’re taking the Red Eye [story], the beginning part of the series,” he explained, “and then we’ll deal with the end of the series. We’re trying to figure out [the time frame]. We’re looking at the story right now.”

“Yeah, it’s so episodic and so disconnected. We’re trying to figure out what pieces to put together to tell one story,” he explained. “Because it’s such a short form, to make a 2 hour version [will be tough]. And it’s got so much of an origin-story obligation; you’ve got to get people up to speed, but you don’t want to do much of that. There are a lot of things to take into consideration, but we think we can do something good.”