Oh. My. God. I was joking with friends the other night at dinner that I had offered up Johnny Depp as a suitable actor to fill the role of Spike Spiegel in the upcoming Cowboy Bebop live-action film, and one of them quipped ‘Yeah, well they’ll probably nab Keanu Reeves…’

Well, guess what…

FirstShowing.net is reporting a pretty unsubstantiated, but no less disturbing, rumor that Mr. Reeves has been on the short list for the role for eight months. Hmmm…I don’t hate Keanu Reeves and in all fairness Spike Spiegel utters less than three sentences of dialogue in the average episode of CB, so maybe he’s not such a bad choice.

Aint-It-Cool-News reports that Anime News Network reports that IF Magazine reports (don’t you love how internet ‘journalism’ works?) that a live-action adaptation of the classic (as in quality, not age) anime Cowboy Bebop is in development at Fox.

Details? None. Well - Erwin Stoff is producing, and he worked on the cool-as-balls Philip K. Dick adaptation A Scanner Darkly. So that’s a few points in this film’s favor. I vote Johnny Depp for Spike Spiegel. And Stoff - a word of caution. Don’t forget to sign Yoko Kanno to do the soundtrack, or you’re in serious trouble, buddy.