Chinese TV adapts The Three-Body Problem before Game of Thrones creators

Since the end of Game of Thrones, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have stayed relatively quiet. They’ve put out a few things on Netflix, like the solid college faculty dramedy The Chair, but nothing anywhere near as big as Game of Thrones.

But that will soon change. Benioff and Weiss are adapting Liu Cixin’s epic sci-fi trilogy Remembrances of Earth’s Past, better known by the title of the first novel in the series: The Three-Body Problem. (Not unlike how Game of Thrones took its name from the first novel in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, incidentally.)

The Three-Body Problem is an intergenerational story about Earth’s first contact with an alien civilization; this one lives in an unstable star system and may see Earth as a more desirable place to settle. Naturally, we Earthlings are divided over what to do about their eventual arrival, and have a while to talk it out as they make their way across the cosmos. We know that Game of Thrones alums John Bradley (Samwell Tarly) and Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth) will be among the cast in this Netflix series. There’s no release date for when The Three-Body Problem will come out, although Netflix has confirmed it should be this year.

China Central Television airs its version of The Three-Body Problem before Netflix

That said, a completely separate adaptation of Liu Cixin’s series called Three-Body already started to air on China Central Television (CCTV) on January 15 of this year. Tencent, a Chinese technology and entertainment multinational and one of the biggest companies in the world, obtained the rights to The Three-Body Problem back in 2008. They started working on a movie version in 2015, but that never came out. Later they started in on this TV version, which is streaming in China on WeTV and Rakuten Viki.

This is completely separate from the Netflix version being made by Benioff and Weiss. Both Tencent and Netflix signed separate deals with YooZoo Group for the rights.

I don’t think this will lead to a war over which show is better, since I doubt the Chinese version of the story will be much seen overseas. Still, a little healthy rivalry never hurt anyone.

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h/t ComicBook.com