Less than a month after its premiere, Cowboy Bebop has been put out to pasture. Netflix has canceled its live-action adaptation of the beloved anime after just one season, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop, which stars John Cho, Mustafa Shakir, and Daniella Pineda, was based on Shinichiro Watanabe’s 1998 animated series of the same name. Its mix of Eastern and Western influences made it a hit in the US, but the 10-episode live-action remake failed to replicate that appeal: It garnered a 46 percent rating from critics on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, with an audience score coming in at 56 percent on the site.
Since Cowboy Bebop’s premiere on November 19th, the series racked up 74 million viewing hours worldwide. While those sound like good numbers, its viewership plummeted 59 percent the week of November 29th.
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“There are short glimmers of hope every couple of episodes, indicators that the creators know what made the original Cowboy Bebop work and wanting so badly to replicate it,” Clint Worthington writes in his review of the series for Consequence. “However, this is a show that can’t quite capture why its creators wanted to remake their inspiration in the first place, and instead feels like a lazy, poorly-mixed cover of your favorite song. Simply put, Netflix’s live-action adaptation of Cowboy Bebop is bean sprouts pretending to be bell peppers and beef.”
A live-action Cowboy Bebop had been in the works for a few years before finally finding its home on Netflix. If you, too, were disappointed in the long-awaited reboot, you can still watch all episodes of the original Cowboy Bebop anime, which Netflix acquired the rights back in October.
