The Three-Body Problem: The New Netflix Bet On A Sci-Fi Blockbuster To Be Eagerly Awaited

As also seen in the Tudum a few weeks ago, I look forward to a Netflix 2023 full of streaming productions of all kinds, with welcome returns and interesting news. The latter certainly includes the inviting The Three-Body Problem, a serial adaptation of the literary trilogy of the same name by Liu Cixin conceived for the small screen by the authors of Game of Thrones, David Benioff and DB Weiss. Not only a winning saga of the prestigious Hugo prize for science fiction, therefore recognized of intellectual interest as well, but a production with solid shoulders entrusted to the hands of those who, on television, has already managed to change and transform it and improve it even before the peak TV explosion itself. With sci-fi and streaming, now, Benioff & Weiss aim to repeat the success of Game of Thrones, building a new and compelling narrative universe under the aegis of Reed Hastings, proposing what could be in all respects one of the next big hits of the Californian giant.

The Three-Body Problem: China of the future

As revealed by the executive producers, The Three-Body Problem has recently entered its delicate post-production phase. We work hard to properly package an epic sci-fi saga full of set pieces and special effects. The scenographic and visual aspect, however, goes hand in hand with ambitious and impressive dramaturgy and storytelling, the beating heart of a story of contact and discovery set in the China of the future. American cinema and seriality have accustomed us to thinking that the first dialogue with an alien civilization must take place in the United States, but it is a habitual commonplace that the genre has already been trying to unhinge for years. By also winning the Hugo Award, Liu Cixin has succeeded, in developing a three-part work full of imagination and content, the result of a modern conceptual and literary evolution of Asimovian sensibilities, with some hints of Dick and Clark.

Perhaps the greatest inspiration, however, is the only one that must be kept silent, at least for the author’s ambition lies precisely in deciphering through the genre the consequences of a revolutionary and bloody past in a dangerous and unstable present. At the center of the story is a scientist, Yen, politically purged because of her ideas, and a researcher in nanotechnology, Wang, who begins to have strange visions of an inexplicable countdown. Hence an extraordinary narrative and a pace of events to leave you breathless.

Promises To Keep

The authors spoke of “an absolute breadth and an extremely calculated measure ” in Cixin’s work. The size of the work is in fact mammoth, especially in the continuous and calculated growth of the vastness of the story, in constant evolution, increasingly outsized but still centered, clear, and functional. In these terms, the transposition will be one of the largest and most expensive of Netflix, but also the most “global”, being the main cast composed of 11 protagonists each from a different country. Furthermore, there was talk of “a visual banquet” in an aesthetically impressive adaptation with attention to every detail, respectful of the original material, and created to be a tribute of love and fidelity to a beloved and somehow seminal work in the Chinese but also world literature.

In the cast many well-known and respected names: were Liam Cunningham, Josh Bradley, Benedict Wong, Eiza Gonzalez, Jovan Adepo, Alex Sharp, and Jonathan Pryce. There are many promises to be kept, especially in the face of such substantial premises. The Three-Body Problem could represent in all respects the true and most sincere rebirth of post-peak TV serial sci-fi and within the streaming era, a product capable of combining technical quality and writing quality in a genre that has so far failed to explode on the small screen like fantasy, not even with Westworld, not as expected after the first and exciting season. Will Benioff & Weiss be able to perform another miracle?