Netflix recently dropped an exclusive clip of its upcoming live-action adaptation of Liu Cixin's best-selling sci-fi book, The Three-Body Problem.


The 3-Body Problem is based on the first book of Liu's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy. It follows the story of astrophysicist Ye Wenjie. She saw her father murdered during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Years later, she gets conscripted by the military and sent to work on a secret base in a remote region of China. A decision she makes in the 1960s echoes across time and space. A group of scientists in the present day work to unravel a mysterious images seen in a virtual reality gadget that might give them answers to fight humanity's greatest threat.

The series was developed by Game of Thrones' David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Rosalind Chao plays present (or 1960s) Ye Wenjie. Benedict Wong (Da Shi), Eiza Gonzalez (Auggie Salazar), John Bradley (Jack Rooney) and Jonathan Pryce (older Mike Evans) also joined the cast.

The series will switch from past, present and future where Earth encounters an alien civilization from a nearby system. This system has three sun-like stars which orbit one another.

The title comes from the actual three-body problem in physics and classical mechanics. Historically, the first three-body problem studied involved the Earth, moon and the sun. Isaac Newton published the traditional sense of the three-body problem in his book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica. In Newton's The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy or Principia, he tried to figure out if long-term stability between the Earth, moon and sun were possible.

Netflix's 3-Body Problem will premiere on March 21, 2024.