Streaming rivals Netflix and Peacock are fighting to be the first to air a series adaptation of Liu Cixin’s sci-fi novels “The Three-Body Problem.” The books take place during China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project that sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. All hell breaks loose when an alien civilization on the brink of destruction receives the signal and decides to invade Earth. This causes the people of Earth to split into two camps, those who welcome their new alien overlords, and those who resist.
Netflix has announced it will launch its series adaptation, “3 Body Problem,” on March 21, 2024. Not to be outdone, Peacock just confirmed they acquired the rights to the Chinese series “Three-Body,” also based on Cixin’s work. Peacock will be launching all 30 episodes on February 10th, beating Netflix’s version by several weeks.
Even though the series’ current streaming platform, Tencent, says the release date is to coincide with Lunar New Year. An NBCUniversal press release gives a slightly different reason for the choice. “With all the buzz surrounding Netflix’s English adaptation, we’re excited about the opportunity for sci-fi and Chinese drama fans to watch the Chinese-language original (with English subtitles) ahead of the Hollywood adaptation.” Which is just “per my last e-mail” levels of corporate sass.
Basically, Peacock is capitalizing on all the publicity Netflix drummed up for the property. Even though both series are based on the same book they will apparently have very different takes on it.
The Chinese series “Three-Body,” is an ultra-faithful adaptation to the point where some consider it too tedious. (To be fair, the books are heavily based on physics and can be a bit dense due to that). Like the novels, this show stays centered on characters from China who grapple with an alien invasion. However, it does gloss over how brutal the Chinese Cultural Revolution is.
Whereas Netflix’s version will be a lot more broad focusing on the struggles on an international level. Taking liberties to make the science elements a bit more accessible. It also seems this version will stay more faithful to the portal of the Revolution.
Netflix’s version is also created by David Benioff and Dan Weiss (“Game of Thrones”) and writer-producer Alexander Woo (“True Blood”). To give a sense of the tone you might expect.
“During the first couple of seasons of Thrones, a lot of people were like, ‘Why didn’t they put in this scene?’ They wanted a literal adaptation of every single page,” Benioff said about the dual adaptaions. “I always wondered, ‘Would people like that if they actually got it?’ Now we have that with this, where there’s one extremely faithful adaptation and then ours, which is less so, and others can judge how they stack up.”
All of this perceived rivalry may be a moot point since most fans seem to be saying they will check out both. It’s not like fans of certain genres aren’t used to several adaptations of the same properties to begin with. Take pretty much any story by Edgar Allan Poe or Phillip K. Dick. for example.
You can check out the trailers for both the Chinese and Netflix series below. All 30 episodes of “Three-Body,” wil hit Peacock on February 10th. The first season of “3 Body Problem,” will hit Netflix on March 21st.
