Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss have announced their next project: a TV series adaptation of the Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy of books by author Liu Cixin. Knives Out and Star Wars: The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson is an executive producer, while The Terror: Infamy creator Alexander Woo is also a writer and executive producer.
Netflix explained why this particular project excited them in a blog post, discussing how its exploration of humanity's first contact with an alien race feels extremely realistic, even if the premise otherwise seems like well-trodden territory. The entire trilogy of books, starting with The Three-Body Problem, will form the basis of this series.
The series features Chinese characters and influences, but this will be an English-language adaptation. Hopefully the background of the story won't be changed – Netflix doesn't say either way, but it does confirm that Liu Cixin is on-board as a consulting producer, along with translator Ken Liu, to "help ensure that the spirit of the books remains intact".
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The talent brought in by Netflix goes beyond the names mentioned above, too: Brad Pitt's Plan B production company is behind the adaptation, along with Primitive Streak, a company that's built to deal with this kind of high-end literary work.
Benioff and Weiss left behind their planned trilogy of Star Wars movies in October of 2019, after signing a content deal with Netflix in August. This is their first major project at the streaming service.
"Liu Cixin’s trilogy is the most ambitious science-fiction series we’ve read, taking readers on a journey from the 1960s until the end of time, from life on our pale blue dot to the distant fringes of the universe," Benioff and Weiss said in a statement accompanying the announcement. "We look forward to spending the next years of our lives bringing this to life for audiences around the world."
No release date is set, but since this is just the announcement, we'd expect to see it in 2021 or 2022.
The Game of Thrones factor
Gaze into the nightmare world of Twitter replies and you'll find some of the responses to this announcement are very negative, and they're from people who watched Benioff and Weiss' last show for eight entire seasons.
While Game of Thrones did have a bad finale that fairly drew a lot of criticism, online discussion around the fantasy show now suggests that the series was somehow good by accident, because its source material was so strong.
The problem with this opinion is, it ignores the fact that there are tons of bad adaptations of great books – Game of Thrones was great for years and years. There's no reason to believe that Benioff and Weiss' next show won't be entertaining, too.
