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After moving on from Game of Thrones and HBO, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff are now making a new sci-fi series for Netflix called 3 Body Problem. Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, the pair discussed the project and elaborated on why the show scares them.
Weiss said what excited him and Benioff about Game of Thrones was how George R.R. Martin’s books represented storytelling they’d never seen adapted for TV before. While 3 Body Problem is very different in its subject matter, “it had that in common,” Weiss said.
Weiss and Benioff finished the 3 Body Problem books on a flight home from Japan after doing promotion for Game of Thrones. “Dan came over to my seat and said, ‘What do you think?'” Benioff said. “I said, ‘Well, that ending is amazing.’ And Dan says, ‘We’ve got to do this, right?'”
“It was the first thing we’d come across since Thrones where we were actually scared. We knew this is going to be hard,” he added.
3 Body Problem tells the story of aliens coming to Earth, but they’ve signaled their arrival and humans have 400 years to prepare. Of course, people don’t agree with how to handle the impending alien arrival, and fights break out. in Season 1, the show will focus on a team of physicists backed by a shadowy intelligence agency alongside anther storyline telling the story of a cult that seeks to join forces with the aliens.
Liam Cunningham, who played Davos on Game of Thrones, plays one of the intelligence officers and Jonathan Pryce, who portrayed the High Sparrow on Game of Thrones, is the cult leader.
Benioff said 3 Body Problem is more focused on how humanity might respond to an existential threat like the arrival of aliens as opposed to “fighting tentacle monsters.”
“And, sadly for us, in the last few years we’ve seen that mankind doesn’t respond particularly well to existential threats. It’s hard to be idealistic and think we’d all come together if we had to,” he said. “The aliens appeal to certain people who believe they’re superior to us–and, technologically, they are.”
Weiss said he is feeling an immense level of pressure for 3 Body Problem to succeed, while Benioff added that it doesn’t matter that Game of Thrones won many awards. “You have to keep proving yourself,” he said.
Season One of 3 Body Problem arrives on Netflix on March 21. Weiss and Benioff also recently discussed their failed Star Wars movie and revealed what went wrong.
