Chinese-American writer Ken Liu—who not only translated the first and third books into English, but made dramatic, author-sanctioned changes to the text as he did so—has been hired to consult on the project as well.
Those inclusions may go some way toward allaying fears that Weiss and Benioff wouldn’t know how to properly handle this distinctly nonwhite property. But what about worries that they may not properly preserve the nuance of a complicated, sprawling epic while translating it from page to screen? As you may recall, early seasons of Thrones were widely praised by devotees of George R.R. Martin’s books—but in the later seasons, big-scale CGI battles, dragons, and ice zombies (oh my!) overshadowed the humanistic pleasures that originally made Westeros stand out in a crowded field.
Enter Rian Johnson, who is producing the Three-Body Problem series with longtime producing partner Ram Bergman. The Knives Out and Star Wars: The Last Jedi director may still be something of a contentious figure in the larger geek community, but the kind of bookish sci-fi devotees who might be worried about the sanctity of the Hugo Award–winning Three-Body Problem and its two sequels are exactly the kind of Star Wars fans who loved Johnson’s intellectual and emotionally complex take on the galaxy far, far away.
There’s also another bit of good news tucked into this press release, particularly for once-hardcore Thrones fans. If you’ve watched any behind-the-scenes features on Benioff and Weiss’s HBO series—and, let’s face it, many of us have—you’ll already be familiar with producer Bernadette “Bernie” Caulfield, who was responsible for making every train in Westeros run on time. Caulfield is now president of Benioff and Weiss’s production company—and the idea of Caulfield being given even more control over Weiss and Benioff’s creative impulses is enormously comforting.
Plan B Entertainment (Brad Pitt, Jeremy Kleiner, and Dede Gardner’s company) is also on board this project, as is Oscar-nominated actor Rosamund Pike, who is producing both this series and Amazon’s massively ambitious Wheel of Time project. (In other words, she’s quietly establishing herself as the woman behind your favorite genre epics.) The caliber of the talented people with historically excellent taste on board here is hard to deny.
Does all of this guarantee the Three-Body Problem series will be good? Oh, surely not; nothing’s a guarantee. But it does seem that Netflix is being very thoughtful about the way it deploys the Thrones showrunners, who somehow managed to come off one of the longest winning streaks in TV history with tarnished reputations. An adaptation of this dense, often overly technical series feels like an unlikely comeback for Weiss and Benioff—but then again, very few people expected Game of Thrones to conquer the world. And at least this time, the book series they’re working with is already complete.
More Great Stories From Vanity Fair
— Angela Davis and Ava DuVernay on Black Lives Matter
— Celebrating 22 Activists and Visionaries on the Forefront of Change
— Here’s Your First Look at The Haunting of Bly Manor
— Ben Affleck Will Return as Batman in The Flash
— Ta-Nehisi Coates Guest-Edits THE GREAT FIRE, a Special Issue
— Behind the Scenes of the Shocking Twist in Below Deck
— How Hollywood Shaped Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff’s Marriage
— From the Archive: Young and Clueless
— Not a subscriber? Join Vanity Fair to receive the September issue, plus full digital access, now.