‘3 Body Problem’ may be next ‘Game of Thrones’
Creators of HBO hit saw opportunity to entice audience to science-fiction story
When Netflix executive Peter Friedlander finished reading the popular Chinese science-fiction trilogy “Remembrance of Earth’s Past” in 2016, he was sure it would be a great TV show.
The books, in which Earth is faced with an alien invasion, told an epic, high-stakes story with intricate world-building, time-jumping and powerful themes.
Three years later he found a team of filmmakers who could turn it into a streaming TV phenomenon, if anyone could — David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the pair who’d adapted George R.R. Martin’s sprawling fantasy saga “A Song of Ice and Fire” into the game-changing hit “Game of Thrones” at HBO. He introduced them to Alexander Woo, co-creator of “The Terror: Infamy,” who joined as a co-showrunner.
It was clearly a risk. The resulting show, called “3 Body Problem,” would be expensive to produce, involve significant visual effects and be shot across England, Spain and the
U.S. But Friedlander saw an opportunity to entice Netflix’s global audience to a sci-fi story that traversed different genres including drama, fantasy elements, mystery and history.
“There’s an opportunity for this show to be wildly popular, and I think it’s because it’s so bold,” Friedlander said. “It’s so innovative. It’s so entertaining and it’s been written and created to bring people onto the ride.”
The eight-episode series is now streaming on Netflix. “3 Body Problem” reportedly cost $20 million
an episode to produce for a total budget of $160 million, a big number even for a Netflix sci-fi spectacle, and similar to the per-episode cost of HBO “Thrones” prequel series “House of the Dragon.”
“It’s a big swing. A huge, cinematic bet,” said Bela Bajaria, Netflix’s chief content officer.
Unlike studios such as Walt Disney Co. and Universal Pictures, Netflix does not have a large back catalog of intellectual property it can rely on to keep churning out familiar hits. Instead, the streamer has invested in original stories like “Squid Game” and “Stranger Things” and gamble on producers who are willing to adapt stories from books and history.
Friedlander mentioned Cixin Liu’s books to Benioff and Weiss in 2019. The duo devoured the trilogy on the plane ride back from a “Game of Thrones” event in Japan and realized this was their next project. It had the scale they were interested in, but was also different enough from
“Game of Thrones,” with its complex scientific concepts.
“As ‘Thrones’ was coming to a close, David and I knew that we weren’t dead yet,” Weiss said. “Thirteen years in high fantasy was fantastic, but ... we wanted to do something different, science fiction, something we both grew up with.”
The show stars actors such as Benedict Wong from Marvel’s “Doctor Strange,” as well as familiar faces from “Game of Thrones” including Liam Cunningham, Jonathan Pryce and John Bradley.
Whether “3 Body Problem” gets a second season depends on whether
Netflix viewers tune in. Most reviews have been generally positive.
“I’m nervous because for us, I think we gauge success by being able to tell the whole story and that means not having just one season, it means getting to the end,” Benioff said. “I really desperately want a second season.”
Friedlander had
been talking up the “Remembrance of
Earth’s Past” books in conversations even before Netflix bought the rights. He called it a “lightning-ina-bottle moment” where he and “two of the greatest storytellers of all time” responded to Liu’s book. The pair signed an overall deal with Netflix in August 2019.
“Knowing how extraordinary they are at adapting material, I thought, they have to be the best people to do this,” Friedlander said.
He later introduced Benioff and Weiss to Woo, a writer and executive producer on the HBO vampire drama “True Blood.” Netflix secured the rights to the English-language adaptation of Liu’s books in 2020.
But the project attracted unwanted attention because of global politics. Five U.S. senators in 2020 asked Netflix to reconsider doing business with Liu, who in an interview with the New Yorker appeared to support the Chinese
government’s actions in putting Uighur people in indoctrination camps in Xinjiang.
“While Congress seriously considers the systemic crimes carried out against the Uyghurs, we have significant concerns with Netflix’s decision to do business with an individual who is parroting dangerous CCP propaganda,” five Republican senators wrote to Netflix.
Netflix, which is not available in China, said in a response to the senators that Liu’s comments “are not reflective of the views of Netflix or of the show’s creators, nor are they part of the plot or themes of the show.” The showrunners said they met with Liu just once, on Zoom.
Production finished in February 2023. But months later, its showrunners felt something was missing. They wanted to shoot a bar scene in the first episode that they thought was essential for the development of two characters.
Then, the writers strike happened before they could write it. That was followed by an actors strike, forcing more delays. But Netflix was willing to wait.
“It was a little bit of a tricky thing because it’s like we want you to hold the show that you’ve already spent X number of dollars on, whatever that number might be — a lot of money — for an indefinite period,” Benioff said. “It was a bit of a leap of faith on their part, but they’ve been beside us every step of the way.”
The series could run the risk of turning off book readers who want a carbon copy of the story as Liu wrote it. Netflix’s English-language adaptation takes place in England, not in China. The Netflix version also features a global cast, changing the race of some of the characters.
“This is a global story,” Woo said. “This is a story of how humanity as a species confronts an existential threat from another planet, and if you’re going to represent humanity as a whole, then you know now the cast should look like humanity as a whole.”
The beginning of the show addresses a dark period in China’s history, which studios that rely on China likely would avoid out of fear of blowback in the country. The series opens with a violent scene set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution in which a physics professor is tortured.
The opening scene in the Netflix version plays out like a documentary, as director Derek Tsang, who worked on the first two episodes, had researched oral histories of that dark historical period, where academics were beaten and some sent to reeducation camps.
“We always go with what’s best for the story,” Benioff said. “There’s full knowledge that this is going to turn some people off and no story is for all people but that’s what this story is.”