David Benioff and Dan Weiss are the creators and showrunners behind Game of Thrones, the biggest show in HBO's history and one of the most talked-about, successful TV series of the 2010s. Game of Thrones ended in a flurry of controversy in 2019. What, people asked, would Benioff and Weiss do next?
Well, they bounced around for a while before figuring that out. They were gonna make another show for HBO, but that fizzled out. Then they were gonna make Star Wars movies, but that fell apart. Eventually they signed a deal with Netflix and made a fun, small scale dramady called The Chair, which was about as far away from the mega-budget Game of Thrones as you could get. But now they're ready to come back to large-scale TV with 3 Body Problem, an upcoming sci-fi show on Netflix.
3 Body Problem is based on the Remembrance of Earth's Past novel trilogy by Liu Cixin. It's about a group of scientists who uncover a conspiracy that may involve humanity's first contact with an alien civilization. The books talk a lot of talk about quantum theory, astrophysics, nanotech and other hard sci-fi concepts. It's a challenging story to adapt to screen, but so was George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. If anybody can do it, it's David Benioff and Dan Weiss.
Like Game of Thrones, 3 Body Problem has a large cast of characters, a story that spans centuries, and a lot of wildly imaginative sequences that will be very hard to translate to TV. Benioff and Weiss have drafted a bunch of their old Game of Thrones colleagues to help bring the books to life. Some faces you'll remember from back when they were stomping around Westeros. Others worked behind the camera but were crucial to the success of the first show and will be just as important to this one.
So who from Game of Thrones, besides Benioff and Weiss themselves, is crossing over to 3 Body Problem? Let's take roll call: