After signing a $200 million deal with Netflix, “Game of Thrones” producers David Benioff and DB Weiss could have made almost any series they wanted. What they wanted was author Cixin Liu's 2008 science fiction novel, “The Three-Body Problem.” Translated into more than 20 languages and with 9 million copies sold, it is the most read Chinese book in modern Chinese history. The first of its kind to win the prestigious Hugo Award for science fiction, it counts among its fans Barack Obama, George RR Martin and filmmaker Rian Johnson (“Knives Out”).
“The books attracted a lot of attention over time,” says Weiss, who, along with Benioff and “True Blood” producer Alexander Woo, is showrunner of “3 Body Problem.” “When Dave and I went to Netflix, they were already in talks with a top film director. [Johnson]. She just so happened to be someone we had been friends with for many years. He had his own movie franchise that he created from nothing and he was happy to deliver it. [“3 Body Problem”] “He greeted us and gave us excellent contributions at all times.”
In the story, hostile aliens are on the way but won't arrive for another 400 years. A series of suicides among top scientists prompts a London detective (Benedict Wong) to investigate a clan of Cambridge University researchers. A mysterious video game powered by technology beyond human capabilities becomes central to the mystery, until it isn't.
With a flickering universe, an eye in the sky and an oil tanker cut up like cold cuts, the eight-part series differs from the novel in significant ways. The action was moved from China to London, one character's gender was changed, and a racially diverse cast portrayed what were previously all Chinese characters.
Netflix is not available in China, but some viewers access it through private networks. Many on Chinese social media say the diverse cast is a symptom of political correctness and that other changes are causing the West to rush to solve a problem unleashed in China. State media said the series promotes “American cultural hegemony” under the guise of diversity. Everyone seems to overlook the fact that Netflix only owns the English rights to the material. Staying strictly true to it would have meant a Chinese cast speaking in English.
“If this is a global crisis, then it would be good to represent everyone on the planet coming together, or not, to deal with the situation,” Woo suggests. “That's what led to the idea of globalizing the cast. And when we spoke to the author, he was already a few steps ahead of us. He thought we would do it and he gave us his blessing.”
Another change was to open the series with a fight session from 1966 during the infamous Cultural Revolution, a dark period in Chinese history in which intellectuals and “anti-revolutionaries” were subjected to public humiliation and abuse, sometimes ending in death. It was originally the first chapter of the book, but on the advice of his editor, the author changed it to soften its impact on censors.
Jess Hong stars in “3 Body Problem.”
(Netflix)
To get the details of the scene right, the producers studied what kind of propaganda posters would hang in the background and the size and tone of Mao's Little Red Book, which the mob waves in unison. “It was a lot of going through old photographs and talking to people who were alive at the time,” Benioff says. “Television is a team sport. A lot of time was spent in long, boring meetings, hours and hours of conversation with the various department heads.”
One boss they did not meet with was the head of the Yoozoo Group, the Chinese firm that owns the rights to “Remembrance of Earth's Past,” the “Three Body” trilogy. Lin Qi, a daring gaming entrepreneur, was hospitalized in December 2020 for mercury poisoning and a neurotoxin similar to that found in pufferfish. He died on Christmas Day. Police arrested Xu Yao, former CEO of a Yoozoo subsidiary called Three-Body Universe, dedicated to developing film and television adaptations of the novel. Xu was reportedly sentenced to death.
According to Benioff, Rian Johnson had drinks with the killer and his victim. Weiss confirmed that she sent a photo of them together in France. “One person we worked with extensively was poisoned, but survived. I think it was mercury poison,” Woo said, adding that it took the victim more than a year to recover.
A bigger impact on the show was not the gimmick surrounding it, but the pandemic. “These books were written in a more optimistic time in international relations, before the COVID pandemic, when our species was truly facing a danger that affects us all. And we didn't come together in any meaningful way,” Benioff notes sadly. “It was a pretty bad performance. The most optimistic view of humanity would say it was a C-minus effort on our part.”
While he acknowledges the impressive ability of science to quickly produce a vaccine, he feels the government failed. “A lot of people just questioned the science. Period. That was interesting for us. Seeing the global reaction to the events, the skepticism towards science and how it has increased in recent years, was eye-opening. And it definitely influenced the writing of the show.”
The three announced late last month that there will be a second and third season of the series, which they began preparing in the spring. “The end of the [book] “The series has a very beautiful, hopeful ending that I never saw coming,” Benioff says. “And it was kind of miraculous the way he brought all of that together into this beautiful final image. “I really hope we get there, because for me it is one of the great endings to one of the biggest and super ambitious sagas of all time.”
