Despite only premiering on March 21st, the showrunners behind Netflix’s new sci-fi epic 3 Body Problem already have ideas for where the series could go next, which is of course dependent on the show gaining enough viewers to justify a renewal.
The first episodic project co-created by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss since their generation-defining fantasy Game of Thrones, the duo partnered up with Alexander Woo to mount the ambitious adaptation of Liu Cixin’s novel, which doesn’t easily translate to the screen.
The narrative zeroes in on a group of brilliant minds who’ve all become the most prominent names in their chosen fields, all of whom happen to be close friends. However, the story jumps back and forth through time to illustrate how a single incident in 1960s China created a domino effect that threatens to unravel everything science has ever known about the inner workings of time, space, and the universe.
One decision echoes through the generations to come, forcing the characters trapped in the midst of the fallout to face up to the biggest threat the human race has ever faced. Netflix’s 3 Body Problem is far from the first time the source material has been brought to television, though, but it’s by far the most expensive and mainstream.
Benioff and Weiss know what it takes to mount a massive-scale ongoing series after their time spent spearheading Game of Thrones, but in an interview with Collider, they admitted that they aren’t planning to get too far ahead of themselves when it comes to future seasons.
“For season 2, we’ve got a rough idea,” Weiss admitted. “We’re much farther along with that plan than rough idea stages. From there on out it becomes, you know, the farther away things get the hazier your view of them is.”
That being said, he did say there are “so many amazing landmarks in terms of scenes and situations and events that we can see pretty clearly,” so it’s not as if he and creative partner Benioff have been sitting on their hands waiting for Netflix to give a second run of episodes the go-ahead.
The streaming service has cancelled plenty of popular and acclaimed originals after a single season when they failed to live up to expectations in terms of drawing in subscribers and keeping them captivated from beginning to end, a situation 3 Body Problem doesn’t want to find itself in if Benioff and Weiss are to realise their dreams.
