Article Excerpt:
As reported by Variety and other outlets, a new film version of The Three-Body Problem is set to be directed by Zhang Yimou, the director renowned for his films like Raise the Red Lantern and Hero. This announcement came out of the Shanghai International Film Festival, directly from Wang Changtian, the CEO of Enlight Media. In essence, this Chinese-language feature film has absolutely nothing to do with Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, and will likely stick closer to the characters from the first and second novels. As many readers noticed, the Netflix version took the character of nanotech expert Wang Miao, and essentially split his story into three different people: Jack Rooney (John Bradley), Jin Cheng (Jess Hong), and Auggie Salazar (Eiza González).
“We hope that director Zhang Yimou can grasp the essence of The Three-Body Problem novel and make some breakthroughs and innovations,” Wang said, adding that he hoped the movie would “gain something in the international market.” This seems to mean that on some level, this version of the story could directly rival the Netflix show. If Zhang Yimou’s take on the story goes on to garner global acclaim (which has happened with his movies before) then, suddenly, in a few years, audiences around the world may be seeing two contradictory versions of this story.