Last year, it was announced that Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had set up an epic Netflix series called Three Body Problem, an adaptation of a trilogy of sci-fi novels written by Chinese author Liu Cixin. Now it has been announced that Hong Kong filmmaker Derek Tsang, whose 2019 film Better Days was nominated for best international feature film at the Academy Awards, will direct the first episode and set the tone for the series. The Hollywood Reporter also hears that Eiza González (Baby Driver, From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series) is in talks to star in the show.
Cixin’s novels tells the story of what happens when
humanity discovers that we are not alone in the universe and prepares for an alien force arriving from a distant and inhospitable world. The title refers to the aliens’ star system, which has three stars orbiting each other in such a way that an Earth-type planet between them keeps suffering extreme hot and cold temperatures, repeatedly wiping out its intelligent civilizations.
Benioff and Weiss serve as showrunners on Three Body Problem, with Alexander Woo (The Terror: Infamy) on board as co-creator, writer, and executive producer. Rian Johnson, Rosamund Pike, Bernadette Caulfield, Ram Bergman, Nena Rodrigue, Robie Uniacke, and Brad Pitt’s Plan B Entertainment are also executive producing, alongside Zhao Jilong, CEO of rights holder The Three-Body Universe, and Lin Qi, the late chairman of rights holder Yoozoo Group.
I haven’t read the source material, but an alien invasion series always has potential to be interesting, and it’s cool that Benioff and Weiss are doing something completely different from Game of Thrones as their follow-up to that show. (I’ve also never watched an episode of Game of Thrones, but I’ve seen enough to know that this is something very different.)
The Three Body Problem was the title of the first novel in Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy. The second novel was titled The Dark Forest and the third Death’s End.