Netflix’s much-anticipated adaptation of Liu Cixin’s The Three-Body Problem will debut next month, but Peacock is stealing a little of that hype by releasing a different adaptation tomorrow. Pretty sneaky, sis.
Peacock will release the Chinese adaptation of The Three-Body Problem, which was released internationally last year. All thirty episodes of the series will be available to stream on Peacock on February 10th. “With all the buzz surrounding Netflix’s English adaptation, we’re excited about the opportunity for sci-fi and Chinese drama fans to watch the Chinese-language original (with English subtitles) ahead of the Hollywood adaptation,” reads the press release from NBCUniversal.
However, THR notes that the two adaptations are quite different despite drawing from the same source material. The Chinese version from Tencent is said to be an “ultra-faithful” adaptation of the story, while the Netflix version includes a global cast and aims to make “the dense and physics-heavy novels” more accessible and entertaining for mainstream audiences. The Tencent series also covers Liu Cixin’s full Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy of novels, but the Netflix version only tackles the first book.
“A young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across space and time into the present day,” reads the synopsis for the Netflix version. “When the laws of nature inexplicably unravel before their eyes, a close-knit group of brilliant scientists join forces with an unflinching detective to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history.”
David Benioff, who developed the series alongside Dan Weiss and Alexander Woo, commented on the differences while speaking with THR last month. “During the first couple of seasons of Thrones, a lot of people were like, ‘Why didn’t they put in this scene?’ They wanted a literal adaptation of every single page,” Benioff said. “I always wondered, ‘Would people like that if they actually got it?’ Now we have that with this, where there’s one extremely faithful adaptation and then ours, which is less so, and others can judge how they stack up.“
Netflix’s 3 Body Problem will debut on the streaming service on March 21st.