In news that a lot of people were probably expecting, Netflix pulled the plug on live-action anime adaptation Cowboy Bebop after a single season, a startling fall from grace for what was one of the year’s most hotly-anticipated new shows across any network or streaming service.
Despite the best efforts of the cast, plenty of impressive visuals and some stunning production design, critics and audiences were left equally cold on the series. A Rotten Tomatoes score of 46% and a user rating of 55% is not the stuff multi-season projects are made of, and longtime fans of the source material had been voicing their frustrations with Netflix’s Cowboy Bebop on a regular basis.
Clearly, the viewership figures weren’t strong enough to compensate for the general malaise that greeted the sci-fi epic, and some of the key players have now weighed in with their reactions, as you can see below.
Budgetary figures haven’t been disclosed publicly, but Cowboy Bebop looked like a very expensive endeavor for Netflix, and the rewards clearly haven’t justified the investment. The $200 million Jupiter’s Legacy was also canned earlier this year after just eight episodes, so blockbuster episodic genre fare is hardly proving to be a consistent success for the platform.