The final trailer for Netflix’s 3 Body Problem teases that “they” are coming and reveals the discovery in the ’70s of something called the “Wow” signal. There’s a lot going on in the final trailer, yet it still manages to pull off being as vague as possible. If you haven’t read Liu Cixin’s 3 Body Problem book trilogy, the trailer will hint at what’s in store without spoiling the experience.
Game of Thrones‘ David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and True Blood‘s Alexander Woo created the series and serve as writers, showrunners, and executive producers. Netflix’s Peter Friedlander, Vice President of Scripted Series, encouraged Benioff and Weiss to read the trilogy back in 2019, and both were immediately hooked.
“Making Game of Thrones was the greatest experience of our lives. But we spent 10 solid years living in that fictional world, so we wanted something that presented a new set of challenges on every level, and this story really does. It’s still genre storytelling — but under that large umbrella, it’s about as far away as you can get from what we’d just done on Thrones. That’s where both the excitement and the fear have come from; you’re doing something new, so you need to start over,” explained Weiss. “You can’t use the template that you used before and just plug new characters and dialogue and story into it. Even the tone is different; the look of it is different. Everything about this show is different.”
Discussing adapting Cixin’s bestselling trilogy, Benioff said, “This is a genre that’s pretty well-trodden, as fantasy was before George R.R. Martin started writing Games of Thrones — there had been thousands of fantasy books about dragons and magic, but George figured out a way to make it fresh. Part of that was coming up with really strong characters.
Benioff continued, “The novels took science fiction and merged heavy, practical science with wildly imaginative spectacle, which is hard to do, but also feels new and fresh. We’re trying to do something similar with this adaptation; it’s the story of an impending threat, but it’s tethered by and centered around this core group of characters. A lot of people who said, ‘I don’t like fantasy,’ became big fans of Game of Thrones. And our hope is that we’ll get a lot of people who normally are not into science fiction to love 3 Body Problem.”
Joining Weiss, Benioff, and Woo as executive producers on the first season are Bernadette Caulfield, Rian Johnson, Ram Bergman, Nena Rodrigue, Qi Lin, Jilong Zhao, Xiaosong Gao, Lauren Ma, Brad Pitt, Jeremy Kleiner, Dede Gardner, Rosamund Pike, and Robie Uniacke. Directors include Derek Tsang, Andrew Stanton, Jeremy Podeswa, and Minkie Spiro.
The Plot: “A young woman’s fateful decision in 1960s China reverberates across space and time into the present day. When the laws of nature inexplicably unravel before their eyes, a close-knit group of brilliant scientists join forces with an unorthodox detective to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history.”
The Cast: Bringing the adaptation to life are Jovan Adepo as Saul Durand, John Bradley as Jack Rooney, Rosalind Chao as Ye Wenjie, Liam Cunningham as Thomas Wade, and Eiza González as Auggie Salazar. Jess Hong plays Jin Cheng, Marlo Kelly is Tatiana, Alex Sharp is Will Downing, Sea Shimooka is Sophon, Zine Tseng is Young Ye Wenjie, Saamer Usmani plays Raj Varma, Benedict Wong stars as Da Shi, and Jonathan Pryce is Mike Evans.
The eight-episode season premieres on Netflix on March 21, 2024.
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