Some good news comes courtesy of SlashFilm: production of the Cowboy Bebop remake as well as Lord of the Rings TV series will soon resume. Both of these productions are in New Zealand, where the government successfully contained the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic with a swift and thorough reaction. While future outbreaks remain a possibility – there is one currently taking place in New Zealand city of Auckland– this bodes well for numerous TV and film productions located there.
In November 2018, Netflix first announced it was developing a live-action remake of the classic 1997 anime Cowboy Bebop. Producers cast John Cho (Sleepy Hollow), Alex Hassell (Suburbicon), Mustafa Shakir (Marvel’s Luke Cage), Daniella Pineda (The Originals), and Elena Satine (Twin Peaks). After Cho suffered a severe knee injury in October 2019, production was put on hiatus and then postponed again when the coronavirus lockdown began in March 2020. Now, the filming will continue as the New Zealand government began slowly lifting pandemic precautions in New Zealand.
As for Lord of the Rings TV series, in November 2017 Amazon bought adaptation rights for The Lord of the Rings for $250 million. On top of that, it committed to at least five season production worth around $1 billion, making this the most expensive TV series in history. The show will take place during the Second Age of the Middle-earth, centuries before the events of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. Spanish horror filmmaker Juan Antonio Bayona (Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, A Monster Calls, Orphanage) will direct the show’s pilot.
