Io9 is reporting that Cixin Liu’s Hugo-Award-winning The Three-Body Problem might be coming to Amazon! There are reports from Financial Times that Amazon’s streaming service is interested in adapting Liu’s The Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy into a three-season show. Notably, the reports are also suggesting that Amazon might be willing to pay up to $1 billion for show. This would add another thoughtful, detail-rich story to Amazon’s line-up, which already boasts The Man in the High Castle, Electric Dreams, and Neil Gaiman’s upcoming Good Omens, not to mention the oliphant in the room: the two-season, $500-million-dollar Lord of the Rings adaptation.
io9 continues:
In a statement reported by Chinese news outlets, YooZoo Pictures stated that it remains the sole owners for the film and TV rights for The Three-Body Problem, though it didn’t comment on whether Amazon had approached the company or were in talks with them to collaborate on this reported streaming project. Cixin was also asked about this development by Chinese news outlet MTime.com, where he revealed he knew nothing about the project and doesn’t know if he’d be invited to work on it.
This news comes after years of reports that YooZoo Pictures were adapting a five-film series to be released this year, but that project appears to have stalled.
The Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy have become some of the biggest sci-fi books in China’s history, and actually helped kickstart a new genre movement in that country. Ken Liu’s translation of the first book, The Three-Body Problem, was published by Tor Books and won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 2015, with two sequels, The Dark Forest and Death’s End, following over the next two years. The trilogy even won a particular fan in Barack Obama.
You can read more about the deal over at io9, and we’ll update news of the adaptation as it comes in—and in the meantime, Liu’s latest novel, Ball Lightning, will hit shelves on August 14, 2018!
