John Cho’s modern-day position may have broken the Internet. On Thursday, Netflix announced that Cho was solid as the lead in its live-motion remake of the hit anime collection Cowboy Bebop. Cho will play Spike Spiegel, a hip bounty hunter who travels the sun machine on the lookout for capability hits.
The collection will also celebrity Mustafa Shakir (as the cop Jet Black), Daniella Pineda (as con artist Faye Valentine), and Alex Hassell (as hitman Vicious). Cho showed the casting information on Twitter shortly after it became reported by means of the trades.
Commence your exhilaration for Cho, one of the Internet’s maximum distinguished boyfriends! His casting in this important series arrives three years after the #StarringJohnCho hashtag become born. That motion, created by using fan William Yu, Photoshopped Cho’s face into posters for mainstream films like The Martian or James Bond installment Spectre—to make a point approximately how Cho have to star in greater films, sure, but also to invite a broader question about Asian illustration in film, which turned into (and nonetheless is) sorely missing. “I’m uninterested in listening to that a function can’t be performed by means of an Asian actor due to the fact human beings ‘simply don’t see it,’” Yu said in a 2016 interview with Mic. “#StarringJohnCho is here to literally display you.”
Cho, with his credentials and beyond enjoy, appeared primed to be an even larger main guy on the box workplace. The hashtag gained traction, supported through actors like Constance Wu (who later were given a #StarringConstanceWu tag) and Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu, who has stated he changed into inspired to combat for that film—which boasts a majority forged of Asian descent—after seeing the pics. “It turned into like a mild became on,” he stated of seeing Cho on those posters, in an interview with Cho himself.
Cho has additionally mentioned the hashtag several instances, writing in a 2018 Instagram post that the #StarringJohnCho motion helped propel his remaining films, Columbus and Searching, each of which was helmed with the aid of Asian-American filmmakers. “The promise of #starringjohncho became for Hollywood to solid those who seem like me in Hollywood hits,” he wrote. “Instead, you’ve made films with humans like me into Hollywood hits. . . . I cannot thanks sufficient.”
And now, he’s landed a first-rate role in a hotly anticipated Netflix task. We tweeted her exhilaration approximately the news, celebrating the casting on Twitter, in addition to sharing an antique Instagram video of herself at the Critics’ Choice Awards along Sandra Oh, Ken Jeong, Jon M. Chu, Harry Shum Jr., and Chris Pang—all of them excitedly shouting “John Cho!” on the camera.
“Just located this video in my text convo with @johnthecho notion perhaps it changed into too drunk to publish however then I changed into like eh, why the fuck not?” Wu wrote inside the caption. “WE LOVE YOU, John!! So psyched to look you as Spike!”
