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Eiza González, with a virtual reality headset, plays the nanotechnology genius Auggie Salazar
David Benioff and DB Weiss are in great spirits. With Game of Thrones a distant memory, its creators are excited about their latest TV show, 3 Body Problem, and there’s not a dragon in sight.
Without giving away the plot, it is about advanced aliens invading Earth. They are fleeing an unstable solar system with three suns orbiting each other, hence the name Three-Body Problem.
The book has two key characters trying to outwit the aliens, a scientist and a detective, but the creators of the television show felt this was not enough.
Five scientists and a naval officer try to defeat the alien invasion.
So, with Liu’s blessing, there are five young, diverse scientists from Oxford trying to defeat the aliens. Well, technically four, since the fifth, played by Game of Thrones’ John Bradley, is a millionaire who used his scientific knowledge to create a multimillion-dollar snack empire.
Snacks are always helpful in a crisis.
They desperately try to solve problems in a deadly virtual reality game, which happens to have three suns, while trying to save Earth from alien attack.
They are watched by a world-weary Mancun detective, played by Dr. Strange star Benedict Wong, and a senior civil servant, played by Game of Thrones’ Liam Cunningham.
Thrones creator Weiss explains that they were impressed by the complexity of the book, calling it “unlike anything we’ve ever read, certainly unlike anything we’ve ever contemplated bringing to the screen.”
Image source, fake images
The creators of 3 Body Problem (LR): Alexander Woo, David Benioff and DB Weiss at the premiere of the show
Other fans of Liu’s novel include former US President Barack Obama, who called it “wildly imaginative”, although he ultimately turned down a small role in the show.
“He signed a very funny note when we tried to get him for a cameo,” Benioff. he told USA Today.
“It was along the lines of, ‘In case there’s ever an actual alien invasion, I think I should probably save myself for that crisis.'”
But after so much success in the fantasy genre, why did Benioff and Weiss abandon it?
They tell BBC News it was simply time to move on.
Image source, fake images
Thrones star Kit Harrington parodied the Saturday Night Live show in 2019
But Benioff and Weiss didn’t want to return to that world, having spent “10 full years” doing 73 episodes in the Kingdoms of Westeros.
It was “the greatest experience of our lives,” Weiss says, but they really wanted “a new set of challenges on every level.”
Weiss calls 3 Body Problem “the furthest thing you can get from what we just did on Thrones.”
Ready for a new challenge, they had to be demanding.
The problem was that Game of Thrones had set the bar very high in terms of expectations.
Jess Hong plays physicist Jin Cheng and Thrones’ John Bradley plays snack supreme Jack Rooney
“You come to work every day and you’re a little surprised that you can do this for a living, and that’s the feeling you’re chasing,” Weiss says.
“Whenever you choose a job that you spend years of your life doing, you don’t want to make the wrong decision; it’s pretty easy to get bored.”
After finally settling on Liu’s book, the duo became a trio, joining forces with Alexander Woo, who created the vampire television series True Blood.
Woo calls the novel “a very exciting challenge to adapt,” adding, “There were ideas and images and stories there, and I almost couldn’t conceive how an author could have come up with this.”
He agrees that choosing the right project is crucial, given how exhausting it inevitably becomes.
“If you’re not excited about it, it’s hard work. It’s a really terrible way to shrink your life unless you love it,” he says.
The virtual reality game has many different areas and brutal consequences.
The three have worked at 3 Body Problem for the past four and a half years, with a team of about 1,000 people.
The book is full of complicated scientific problems that were not easy to translate into a television show.
A crash course in physics was needed, and the show’s creators say they would have been lost without the help of two scientific experts.
They spoke with Matthew Kinsey, who Weiss said was “on the team that discovered the Higgs boson particle,” and Bobak Ferdowsi, a flight engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Bobak was in a lot of control rooms when they were launching rockets,” Weiss explains.
The two scientists “guided us through physics for dummies” and were present throughout the series.
Astrophysics prodigy Ye Wenjie (right), played by Zine Tseng, is inextricably caught up in the Chinese Cultural Revolution of 1966.
A starry night at Christ Church College, Oxford University
The show begins during China’s Cultural Revolution in 1966 and continues to modern-day Britain, passing through Badajoz in Spain, the United Nations Headquarters in New York and Cape Canaveral in Florida. Plus, there’s plenty of outdoor space, too.
Weiss and Benioff were familiar with the United Kingdom, having used it as a filming location for Game of Thrones. The return was the perfect excuse to reunite with some former “Friends of Thrones” cast members, including actors Bradley, Cunningham and Sir Jonathan Pryce.
Bradley had played the fearful and kind Samwell Tarly on Thrones, and Benioff says they loved creating a completely different character for him.
“Dan (Weiss) and I were in a pub in Belfast and saw John talking to an American tourist. He was very funny and sarcastic; it was a side of him that we know quite well, having spent a lot of time with him.
“The real John is nothing like Samwell, so we thought it would be fun to write a role that was closer to him.”
The result was sandwich merchant Jack Rooney, who gets some of the show’s best one-liners.
Liam Cunningham, pictured as Wade from 3 Body Problem, played Ser Davos in Game of Thrones
When they cast Wade, a gruff character who leads the fight against the aliens, they went against the book’s description of “a 40-year-old American who looks like Hugh Jackman.”
Instead, they hired Liam Cunningham, who played the knight Ser Davos on Game of Thrones.
“I love Liam, but I don’t think anyone could accuse him of looking like Hugh Jackman!” Benioff laughs.
“But it’s fantastic and, again, it’s a very different role.”
They also cast Sir Jonathan, who played Thrones’ religious zealot High Sparrow, as billionaire oil tycoon Mike Evans.
Benioff calls him “one of the great living actors” and adds that they “basically begged” Dr. Strange star Benedict Wong to join the show, as Mancun detective Da Shi.
Benedict Wong plays Detective Da Shi
The show also has some very strong and devilishly brilliant female characters holding the plot together, played by Rosalind Chao, Jess Hong, Zene Tseng, Eiza González and Marlo Kelly.
It’s clear that Benioff, Weiss, and Woo are enjoying the ride; right after I ask them not to tell me what happens in the last episode, Benioff drops a major plot spoiler into the conversation.
“I just hope people aren’t too upset with the world exploding in episode eight and keep watching,” he deadpans.
They immediately burst into laughter; She said it just to see the look on my face.
I can report that it turned out to be completely false.
The show’s producers include Brad Pitt, Saltburn actress Rosamund Pike and Knives Out/Glass Onion director Rian Johnson.
He added: “The global success of the Three-Body series changed everything, catapulting its epic themes of technological prowess and the fate of humanity into the public consciousness.”
The show’s creators hope to take advantage of this popularity (the novel is the first part of a trilogy, called Remembrance of Earth’s Past) and want to finish the story.
“I hope it’s as big as Thrones,” Benioff says.
“Our goal really is to get to season three.”
3 Body Problem launches on Netflix on March 21.