Following their stupendous success with the adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s Game Of Thrones, David Benioff and Daniel ‘D.B.’ Weiss are back with their next big project. The duo in collaboration with Alexander Woo, have spearheaded the Netflix sci-fi series 3 Body Problem, an adaptation of the award-winning novel by author Liu Cixin which premiers on March 21st, 2024.
The story set in China during the 60s, is a thriller that follows a group of scientists who join forces with a brilliant detective to confront humanity’s greatest threats. While the creators are no strangers to making any challenge look easy, this novel and the work involved in bringing it to life became an almost insurmountable task, especially with regard to the significant video game scenes.
This New Series Posed Many Problems For Game Of Thrones Creators
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss proved their mastery to the world by expertly adapting prolific author George R.R.Martin’s Game of Thrones into a cult series. While creating a screenplay for these vast novels is no small feat, the showrunners made it look effortless in the manner in which they translated the novelist’s vision to the screen.
Moving from fantasy to science fiction, the duo are back once again with their highly anticipated project 3 Body Problem which is an adaptation of the book written by award-winning author Liu Cixin. A complex sci-fi thriller sets in 1960s China, the story posed a huge challenge for Weiss and Benioff despite their expertise in handling many visual and technical complexities in Game of Thrones.
One of the segments that is pivotal to the plot is the presence of many video game sequences in the novel. Visualizing these scenes for the series and attempting to do justice to their relevance in the book posed one of the biggest difficulties for the creators and made them realize that this was no child’s play.
Elaborating on the technical nuances that went into creating this virtual reality, Weiss in an interview that appeared in The Hindu, spoke about the diffficulties in creating the lighting to depicting the interaction of complicated elements while keeping the aesthetic nuances of the time period intact.
“Yes, for sure, I’d say along with the China sequences, the video game sequences were some of the earliest things that made us realise this wasn’t like other television shows. A very difficult challenge was in lighting a world that has three suns as you see in the game. This involved a very large array of interactive lighting that everyone put together.”
With these massive segments requiring a hefty budget, the showrunners had to justify the money that was being poured into the project by ensuring that these sequences were of the highest quality.
How Did 3 Body Problem Come To Be?
With their brilliant adaptation of Game Of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B Weiss have proved that they have what it takes to give audiences a majestic visual experience. Now, they are back with their brand new sci-fi Netflix series 3 Body Problem based on the book by Liu Cixin which is premiering on the platform on March 21st, 2024.
In an interview with GQ, the showrunners looked back on how this project came to be and why they decided to plunge into it. While the final season of Game Of Thrones was underway and creating massive talking points, Weiss and Benioff were on a plane fervently pouring over Liu Cixin’s cult trilogy sci-fi novels collectively known as Remembrance of Earth’s Past. The writers were so taken in by the brilliance of the books that they made an instinctive decision together.
I said, ‘We’ve got to do it, right?’ He was like, ‘Yeah. We’ve got to do it.”
The pair got things moving along pretty quickly after that. Three months after Game of Thrones ended, Netflix announced a deal with the duo for an the eight-part show starting with the first book of the trilogy.
3 Body Problem streams on Netflix from 21st March, 2024.
