Filming completed for Chinese TV adaptation of The Three-Body Problem

Chinese actress Olivia Wang plays the younger version of physicist Ye Wenjie in the television series Three-Body. PHOTO: OLIVIA WANG/ WEIBO

BEJING • •Filming has been completed for Three-Body, a live-action television adaptation of Chinese author Liu Cixin's Hugo Award-winning science-fiction novel, The Three-Body Problem.

The show made the announcement on its official Weibo account on Monday by releasing a promotional video, which did not specify the date of release.

It said filming took about six months, with the Chinese series' development beginning more than four years ago.

The Three-Body Problem (2008) is the first book of Liu's trilogy Remembrance Of Earth's Past, which revolves around Chinese physicist Ye Wenjie's contact with the Trisolarans, an alien civilisation that exists in a three-sun system, and the centuries-long clashes that follow between earthlings and the aliens.

The second and third books in the trilogy are The Dark Forest (2008) and Death's End (2010) respectively.

Chinese actress Olivia Wang plays the younger version of Ye, while the older version of the physicist is played by actress Chen Jin.

The 24-episode series, which also stars Edward Zhang and Yu Hewei, is directed by Yang Lei.

In 2015, Liu became the first Asian writer to win the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Novel for The Three-Body Problem.

An animated adaptation of the novel, announced last year as a project by Chinese online video sharing platform Bilibili, is scheduled for release next year.

Streaming giant Netflix also announced in September that it was adapting the novel into an English-language television series helmed by Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.

The Wandering Earth, a science-fiction short story by Liu, 57, was turned into a blockbuster film last year that generated a box-office revenue of 4.68 billion yuan (S$954.5 million) in China.

Its sequel, The Wandering Earth II, is set for release in 2023, according to an announcement made last month.

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on December 16, 2020, with the headline Filming completed for Chinese TV adaptation of The Three-Body Problem. Subscribe