Friday, January 16, 2009

Did I Just...: Casting Call Edition

To paraphrase Lil John (and to a lesser extent The Doctor): "What? What?!"

First I have to hear that there was even talks of a Cowboy Beebop live action film. That in and of itself would be enough to make me boggle. But then, I have to learn about said film as I stumble across this tidbit of news from Newsarama.


Keanu Reeves is set to add another genre project to his resume, as the trades are reporting that he will star in a live action version of Cowboy Bebop for Twentieth Century Fox, based on the anime series. This confirms reports that Reeves would have some role in the live action version that have been circulating since summer.

You have to understand that I say this as a person who actually believes that Keanu Reeves can be a capable actor with range and everything. Mind you, I base this almost exclusively on not hating the film A Walk in the Clouds, but something had to be going right in my head there. At any rate, I have to say that Keanu as Spike Speigel? Um, no. This is a bad play call. And not bad like Keanu as Constantine. No, that was just an odd call. This may well be the first time ina good while that I can honestly say news like this killed any interest for me.

But to be fair, it's not like I believe in the project to begin with. I'm one of the rare few that has made his peace with Cowboy Beebop as a series and truly believes that any attempts to expand or continue it are destined to failure and disappointment. And while that may just be creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, I'll believe otherwise when I see it. As it stands, I have more confidence in the upcoming Dragonball film than I ever will in this project. The only thing that could save it is they somehow managed to drag Beau Billingslea into it. Yeah, it's like that.

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