3 Body Problem: Game of Thrones duo Benioff and Weiss’ next show is sci-fi epic swapping dragons for aliens

New Netflix series will do for sci-fi what HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’ did for fantasy

The new TV show from the creators of Game of Thrones is about to place the spotlight on a new book phenomenon.

David Benioff and DB Weiss were the duo behind the HBO adaptation of George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. After launching in 2011, Game of Thrones swiftly become the most successful show on TV around the world, airing for eight seasons and concluding with a much-maligned finale.

Now, the pair are back with a brand new series – after scrapping plans for thier misjudged slavery seriesConfederate as well as quitting a mooted Star Wars film, Benioff and Weiss, alongside Alexander Woo, are about to unveil 3 Body Problem, a genre-bending science-fiction series destined for cult status.

The show is the first series Benioff and Weiss have made for Netflix after reported $200 million deal they signed in August 2019 to write, produce and direct new films and television for the service.

It is an adaptation of Liu Cixin’s novel, titled The Three-Body Problem, and follows an astrophysicist (Rosalind Chao) whose “fateful decision in the 1960s echoes across space and time to a group of scientists in the present day, forcing them to face humanity’s greatest threat”.

The synopsis reads: “As the laws of nature unravel before their eyes, five former colleagues reunite to confront the greatest threat in humanity’s history.” Suffice to say, extraterrestrials are involved.

Like with Game of Thrones, the showrunners have more than one book to borrow from – 3 Body Problem is the first adaptation of a trilogy referred to as Remembrance of Earth’s Past. The show will present an expansive world in an epic way, similar to recent sci-fi shows including Apple TV+’s Foundation and Invasion. If done effectively, this series will be as much of a hit among sci-fi fans as Thrones was for fans of fantasy.

The show will reunite Benioff and Weiss with several of their former show’s cast members, including John Bradley (Samwell Tarly), Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos Seaworth) and Jonathan Pryce (High Sparrow). Also starring in the series will be Jovan Adepo, Benedict Wong, Eiza González, Ben Schnetzer and Alex Sharp.

It took some time for Benioff and Weiss to settle on 3 Body Problem as their first post-Thrones project.. The pair initially announced controversial plans to make Confederate, a drama imagining an alternate, post-Civil War world in which “the southern states have successfully seceded from the Union, giving rise to a nation in which slavery remains legal and has evolved into a modern institution”.

Jonathan Pryce will star in David Benioff and DB Weiss’s ‘3 Body Problem’ (Netflix)

It was met with a huge backlash upon its announcement in 2017, with critics dismayed at the idea of two white men running a TV show about slavery. In February 2019, it was announced that the pair were due to write and direct a new trilogy of Star Wars movies that would begin in 2022. The films would follow the current Star Wars trilogy, which ended in December 2019 with The Rise of Skywalker.

However, they ultimately backed out of the planned trilogy, blaming their commitments to Netflix.

3 Body Problem will be released on Netflix on 31 March.