Keanu Reeves, who stars in the box office-topping remake The Day the Earth Stood Still, talked about the progress that producer Erwin Stoff, who has worked exclusively with Reeves for the past two decades, has made on a live action remake of Shinichiro Watanabe and Keiko Nobumoto’s anime sensation Cowboy Bebop in an interview with MTV.  Reeves told MTV that he was eager to play Cowboy Bebop protagonist and futuristic space cowboy, Spike Spiegel.  “We’ve got the rights, we’ve got a writer, and he’s putting together a scene outline,” Reeves told MTV about the Cowboy Bebop project, which is set up at Fox.

Cowboy Bebop is one of the most popular anime TV series ever broadcast in the U.S.  By the middle of 2005, Bandai Entertainment had already sold over a million Cowboy Bebop DVDs, and the idiosyncratic series continues to get exposure on the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim.

Reeves explained to MTV why he loved Cowboy Bebop, “It’s got a Western quality, a Western/film noir aspect to it.  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.” According to Reeves the live action film will focus on the origins of the Bebop team of bounty hunters and will incorporate the conclusion to the 26-episode anime and at least some of the episodic adventures explored in the series.

Creating the right “look” for the live action movie is of paramount concern for Reeves, who told MTV, that he thought Cowboy Bebop would be “a production designer’s dream. I think you just need a good production designer.”  Fans of the Cowboy Bebop anime would add that “you also need to get Yoko Kanno to create the music for the live action movie.”