Netflix is about to find out if it can have its own “Game of Thrones” without having “Game of Thrones.”
When Netflix executive Peter Friedlander finished reading the popular Chinese sci-fi trilogy “Remember Earth” in 2016, he was sure it would make a great TV show. The books, in which Earth faces an alien invasion, tell an epic, high-stakes story with intricate world-building, time jumps, and powerful themes.
Three years later, he found a team of filmmakers who could turn it into a streaming television phenomenon, if anyone could: David Benioff and DB Weiss, the pair who had adapted George RR Martin's sprawling fantasy saga “Song of ice and fire” to the cinema. a groundbreaking hit on HBO. He introduced them to Alexander Woo, co-creator of “The Terror: Infamy,” who joined as co-showrunner.
It was clearly a risk. The resulting show, called “3 Body Problem,” would be expensive to produce, include major visual effects and would be filmed in England, Spain and the United States. But Friedlander saw the opportunity to attract Netflix's global audience to a science fiction story that included different genres including drama, fantasy elements, mystery and history.
“There's an opportunity for this show to be tremendously popular, and I think that's because it's so bold,” Friedlander said. “It's very innovative. “It is very entertaining and has been written and created to bring people along for the ride.”
The eight-episode series, which premieres its first full season on Thursday, is part of Netflix's strategy to bet big on programming that it hopes will resonate with its 260 million global members and potential subscribers. “3 Body Problem” reportedly cost $20 million per episode to produce on a total budget of $160 million, a high figure even for a Netflix sci-fi show, and similar to the cost per episode of the series. prequel to HBO’s “Thrones,” “House.” from the Dragon.”
“It's a big change. A great cinematic bet,” said Bela Bajaria, Netflix's chief content officer, at a press conference in January.
Unlike studios like Walt Disney Co. and Universal Pictures, Netflix doesn't have a deep catalog of intellectual property it can rely on to continue producing family hits. Instead, the streamer has invested in original stories like “The Squid Game” and “Stranger Things” and has banked on producers 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 back from a “Game of Thrones” event in Japan and realized this was their next project. It had the scale that interested them, but it was also quite different from “Game of Thrones,” with its complex scientific concepts.
“When 'Thrones' was coming to an end, David and I knew we weren't dead yet,” Weiss said. “Thirteen years in high fantasy were great, but 13 years of mud, horses, armor and more horses stomping through the mud and trying to make sure they don't trample you, we're already sick of almost being trampled. by horses. So we wanted to do something different, science fiction, something we both grew up with.”
Neither Netflix nor the showrunners would comment on the budget, but Benioff has said that the series is “four films long” in visual effects. The show stars actors like Benedict Wong from Marvel's “Doctor Strange,” as well as familiar faces from “Game of Thrones,” including Liam Cunningham, Jonathan Pryce and John Bradley.
“It seems like a very ambitious program,” said Susanne Daniels, YouTube's former global head of original content. “Every once in a while, all these streamers should swing for the fences and make some noise to try to stand out as a must-watch for subscribers.”
The high-profile series comes as popular Netflix shows like “The Crown” ended last year and “Stranger Things” and “Cobra Kai” are in their final seasons, leaving Netflix hungry for broader, more prominent hits.
Other competing streaming services are also spending big on big franchises, even as Wall Street demands financial discipline and higher profits. Amazon spent more than $700 million on the first season of “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” including the costs of television rights, according to people familiar with the matter who declined to be identified. Whether “3 Body Problem” gets a second season depends on whether viewers tune in to Netflix. Most reviews have been generally positive.
“I'm nervous because for us I think we measure success by being able to tell the full story and that means not just having one season, it means getting to the end,” Benioff said. “I really desperately want a second season.”
While they are best known for the success of “Game of Thrones,” not all of the projects Benioff and Weiss have been linked to panned out as they sought follow-ups.
The duo had been chosen to develop a “Star Wars” trilogy for Disney and Lucasfilm that failed. Also shelved was an HBO show that would have explored an imminent third American Civil War, in an alternate reality where the South seceded from the union and slavery still exists (the idea sparked outrage online). The two served as executive producers of a smaller series, Netflix's “The Chair,” whose showrunner was Benioff's wife, Amanda Peet. It did not have a second season.
Friedlander had been talking about the “Remember Earth's Past” books in conversations even before Netflix bought the rights. He called it a “lightning in a bottle moment” in which he and “two of the greatest storytellers of all time” responded to Liu's book. The couple 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, writer and executive producer of the HBO vampire drama “True Blood.” Netflix picked up the rights to the English-language adaptation of Liu's books in 2020 (an earlier Chinese-language adaptation was produced by Shenzhen-based technology and entertainment company Tencent).
But the project attracted unwanted attention due to global politics. In 2020, five US senators 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 placing Uyghurs in indoctrination camps in Xinjiang.
“While Congress seriously considers the systemic crimes committed against Uighurs, 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 response to senators that Liu's comments “do not reflect the views of Netflix or the show's creators, nor are they part of the plot or themes of the show.” Producers said they met Liu only once, on Zoom.
Production wrapped in February 2023. But months later, its showrunners felt something was missing. In the first episode they wanted to film a bar scene that they thought was essential for the development of two characters.
Then the writers' strike happened before they could write it. An actors' strike followed, causing further delays. But Netflix was willing to wait.
“It was a little tricky because it's like we want you to celebrate the show that you've already spent X dollars on, whatever that number is, a bunch of money, for an indefinite period of time,” Benioff said. saying. “It was a leap of faith on their part, but they have been by our side every step of the way.”
It remains to be seen whether audiences will flock to the show. The series could risk turning off book readers who want a carbon copy of the story as Liu wrote it. Netflix's English adaptation takes place in England, not 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 about how humanity as a species faces 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.”
In recent months, Netflix has promoted the series through eye-catching events and marketing initiatives. At the show's premiere at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, large holograms were projected into the night sky, with images including a giant floating eye.
In a packed theater, entertainer Daiqi Cui, 30, and her husband, photographer Eric Apolly, enjoyed watching the first episode at SXSW. They both live in Brooklyn and are “Game of Thrones” fans. During the premiere, the couple received plastic replicas of virtual reality headsets similar to those on the show, which they brought on their flight home and plan to wear.
“They really captured the landscape, exactly how the book would describe it,” said Apolly, 33, who has read Liu's novels. “The atmosphere was perfect.”
The beginning of the show addresses a dark period in Chinese history, which China-dependent studios would likely avoid for fear of backlash at home. The series begins with a violent scene set during the Chinese Cultural Revolution in which a physics teacher is tortured.
The opening scene of the Netflix version plays out like a documentary, as director Derek Tsang, who worked on the first two episodes, researched oral histories from that dark historical period, where academics were beaten and some sent to re-education camps. .
“We always go with what's best for the story,” Benioff said. “We all know this is going to turn some people off and no story is for all people, but that's what this story is.”
Times staff writer Mark Olsen contributed to this report from Austin, Texas.
