Cowboy Bebop the movie is set to open in New York this year for a silver screen debut. This will be the biggest opening for a Japanese Anime movie I've heard of, and it is one more reason that Hollywood ought to be a bit concerned about losing their hegemony.
The Bebop series debut in Japan in 1998 and quickly became the #1 anime series on Japanese TV. It has become monsterously popular in the US since appearing here. Unauthorized versions of the movie with English subtitles have been making the rounds, and the anime faithful have dubbed it worthy of the Bebop name.
The movie is neither a prequil or a secquil to the series, but is a story that might have fit anywhere within the middle ten or so episodes, when the entire cast of characters was assembled aboard the spaceship Bebop. As such, it might have been just another especially long episode in the series, which included a number of episodes that built on the characterizations without touching on the plot themes undergirding the series. Thus, one problem with the movie is that it does not attempt the level of story development that the series does
However, the movie does much to satisfy in the Cowboy Bebop way, with plenty of action, snappy characterizations that build on the profiles established in the series, and a winning plot.