three figures to find out more about the new Netflix event series

Signed by David Benioff and DB Weiss, masterminds of “Game of Thrones”, the series is adapted from a best-selling Chinese science fiction book, written by Liu Cixin. The eight-episode first season arrives Thursday on Netflix.

A book deemed unadaptable. Netflix challenged itself by transposing to the screen The Three-Body Problem, a science fiction novel written by Chinese author Liu Cixin. The platform entrusted the project to David Benioff and DB Weiss, who were in charge of Game Of Throneshuge success of the 2010s.

The first two episodes of this highly anticipated series were previewed at the opening of the Séries Mania international festival in Lille. The entire first season arrives on Netflix Thursday March 21.

1A story that covers (much) more than fifty years of history

Scientifically, the three-body problem is “an enigmatic problem of orbital mechanics: when three celestial bodies interact gravitationally, no modeling can predict their movements”writing The world. This theory follows the work of the French mathematician Henri Poincaré who “discovered that three isolated bodies in space, subject only to their mutual attractions, can have extremely complex trajectories”summarizes the CNRS, cited by Numerama.

The novel begins with a Chinese astrophysicist, Ye Wenjie, working in the secret Chinese military base of Côte Rouge in 1967, in the midst of the Cultural Revolution. She is brought to work there on a teletransmission system directed towards space. The astrophysicist will make a radical decision by coming into contact with a star, Trisolaris, inhabited by a civilization on the verge of gravitational collapse and located 4.3 light years from Earth. Trisolaris for three suns, or the three bodies whose chaotic orbits prevent the survival of this civilization.

This contact will have dramatic repercussions, in the 21st century, on the international scientific community. She is faced with a wave of suicides, while the Trisolarians begin a space journey of more than four centuries to invade Earth. The action will notably follow the footsteps of scientists, in London and China, who find themselves embroiled in this story mixing “astronomy, astrophysics, particle physics”, details the France Culture podcast, “Science, CQFD”. It’s a fresco “half-thriller, half-science fiction”, summarized Bela Bajaria, director of content at Netflix, during a presentation to the press in Los Angeles. However, readers might be a little thrown off by this adaptation, since new characters appear and the timeline of the story is changed a bit.

2 Three cult books

Before becoming a recognized science fiction writer, author of eight novels and around thirty short stories, Liu Cixin, born in 1963 in China, led a career as an engineer. He grew up during the Cultural Revolution and “was nourished under the cloak of the writings of Jules Verne”relates in the podcast “La science, CQFD” Gwennaël Gaffric, lecturer in Chinese language and literature at Jean-Moulin Lyon 3 University and translator of the novel into French. The Three-Body Problem is the first novel in a trilogy, completed by The Dark Forest And Immortal Death, published in China between 2006 and 2010 and which has, in total, more than 2,000 pages. First translated into English, the first part of this trilogy was adapted for France in 2016. But some reluctance had to be overcome.

“The French publishers, when I was able to propose an adaptation before the English-language publication of the trilogy, were not very interested.”

Gwennaël Gaffric, French translator of the novel “The Three-Body Problem”

at France Culture

Obtaining the prestigious Hugo Prize for best novel in 2015, awarded by the World Science Fiction Society, “triggered the sequel”, assures the translator. He specifies that the book even had “a little VIP readers like Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg”, who advertised it. The trilogy has since attracted “more than 260 million readers worldwide”advances the Shanghai evening daily Xinmin WanbaoQuoted by International mail. Gwennaël Gaffric also says that Benoît Delépine, one of the brains behind Groland on Canal+, dreamed of adapting the book. But the director couldn’t really fight against Amazon and Netflix who fought over the rights with offers. “with many zeros”according to the translator.

Before Netflix won the day and succeeded in transposing the book to the screen, many lost their teeth. “In ten years, attempts to adapt the trilogy have multiplied: animated series, video games, feature films”lists The world. “A few years ago I participated in an adaptation [un projet inabouti du studio shanghaïen Yoozoo] and I was deeply impressed by the difficulty of transposing the novel to the big screen”, tells Liu Cixin daily. Ultimately, two projects came to fruition: that of the famous American platform, but also a Chinese television series of 30 episodes produced by Tencent Video and broadcast in January 2023.

3 A budget of 200 million dollars

“Liu Cixin’s trilogy is the most ambitious science fiction story we have ever read, taking readers on a journey from the 1960s to the end of time, from the world living on our blue planet to the far reaches of the universe”, David Benioff and DB Weiss, head of the Netflix project, with which author Liu Ciuxin is widely associated, said in a press release. For this adaptation, the duo had free rein and this project benefits from the largest budget ever allocated by Netflix for a series, 200 million dollars.

David Benioff and DB Weiss surrounded themselves with technicians already on board on the adaptation of George RR Martin’s books: production designer Deborah Riley, visual effects producer Steve Kullback and composer Ramin Djawadi. We also find in the series actors from Game Of Thrones : Liam Cunningham, John Bradley and Jonathan Pryce. Benedict Wong, Tsai Chin and Eiza González complete the cast.

Filming was rapid, in nine months from November 2021, in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, in the Shepperton studios and various locations in the United Kingdom but also in Badajoz in Spain, at the United Nations headquarters in New York as well as Cape Canaveral in Florida.

“In terms of size, scope and ambition, it probably goes even further than ‘Game of Thrones,’ which took place chronologically. There, part of it is set in China in the 1950s and 60s, part of 2024 in Great Britain, a game in a virtual reality game.”

John Bradley, actor

to AFP

Netflix has therefore managed to overcome the fears of the novel “written for a Chinese audience, without knowing that it would be published in English, let alone adapted for Western viewers”. “There are many elements specific to Chinese culture”analyzes the author in The world. The platform is therefore betting very heavily on this adaptation. The creators are already working on a season 2, based on the second volume, The Dark Forest. “We have more than a rough idea, we actually have a plan, we are no longer at the ideas stage”assures DB Weiss to the specialist magazine Collider. The duo is also considering a series over three or four seasons “to tell this story as a whole”explains David Benioff.