Mic Drop #16: The Execution Risk Has Increased for Netflix's "The Three-Body Problem" Production in China
Mic Drop #16: The Execution Risk Has Increased for Netflix's "The Three-Body Problem" Production in China
But first, some housekeeping
Some Housekeeping
First, a quick note that for the next two to three months, I will be sending all PARQOR mailings from Substack: parqor.substack.com
Why? The short, non-technical reason is because the WordPress backend for PARQOR.com is creating too many pain points and inefficiencies for me to list, and a key one is the repeated, unexplainable loss of 3,000-word pieces when I would click to save a draft of them.
How will this move impact you?
Positively, because you will get more content as part of this Substack subscription:
Monday AM Briefing
Tuesdays or Wednesdays Member Mailings (the intro paragraphs, full access for members; and
Friday Mic Drops
I have set up a paywall for the Member Mailings on this Substack, which means you will also be able to upgrade to a Monthly Membership on this Substack.
Last, if you liked the Landing & Rolling name and are sad to see it go, please let me know. It was a fun experiment, and if it makes sense, I can always bring it back.
This Week’s Mic Drop
In January, I wrote in Monday AM Briefing #31:
Netflix's owned IP strategy certainly faces complications in China with the production of The Three-Body Problem, a piece of owned IP I highlighted [in my Predictions for 2021 slide on the PARQOR Hypothesis]. Producer Lin Qi died from poisoning by a coworker. Lin was a driving force behind The Three Body Problem coming to TV ($ - NYT subscription required), having invested an estimated $150MM of his own money into the copyrights and licenses connected to the books.
The Three-Body Problem is a major, highly publicized bet from Netflix - with the writing team from Game of Thrones no less. With the death of Lin, it has lost a, if not the, driving force for the series production in China.
Will we see The Three-Body Problem on Netflix? Most likely, but not probably. The road from here to there has gotten a lot riskier for the production, and without the production's driving force, one has to imagine Netflix is re-evaluating its bet on this original IP.
I have since not thought about the story much until today, when I read that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the same ones behind The Three-Body Problem, are producing a Netflix adaptation of The Overstory with Hugh Jackman.
So I tweeted:
A Twitter exchange with a follower, NetflixStan, turned up this deep-dive update on The Three-Body Problem production in China from Fortune’s Grady McGreger.
Wow, does this article back up my prediction that the likelihood of us seeing the series as “most likely, but not probably”:
"[Lin Qi] was the one pushing the project forward and [the Netflix deal] seemed like the culmination of all his efforts," says Stanley Rosen, a Chinese politics, society, and film professor at the University of Southern California. "It seems like a project that’s jinxed."
[….]
At the very least, Rosen says, Lin's death will make it more difficult for Netflix and Yoozoo to deal with the delicate set of issues that face any collaboration between Hollywood and China.
Productions aimed at placating audiences in both China and the U.S. tend to run into problems, Rosen said, and cited examples like The Great Wall, a co-production between the China Film Group and Universal Pictures, and Disney's Mulan, which struggled to gain traction in China and faced blowback in the U.S. for cooperating with security forces in Xinjiang.
He says that someone like Lin, who was passionate about the Three-Body Problem, would be critical to ensuring that the production accurately represents the book's cultural context and source material.
"Replacing [Lin] can be done, but you won’t get anyone as committed as he was," says Rosen. One of Lin's former professors wrote a note on an online memorial for Lin that said Lin personally spent $150 million on securing rights to the Three-Body Problem and felt it was his life's work to bring Liu's novels to a larger audience.
First, I have no family relations to Professor Stanley Rosen, so I’m not helping a family member out here. Second, all evidence points to what he’s saying: Netflix will try to get Three-Body Problem done, but it is hard to conclude the odds are “probable”.
Why I Remain Skeptical
There are two ways to read the both the Overstory adaptation news and the Fortune article on The Three-Body Problem:
We can bet on Netflix finding a way to manage the increased execution risk and bring The Three-Body Problem series to audiences, OR
Even if Netflix can find a way to make The Three-Body Problem work, the execution risk is too high.
The Overstory adaptation news doesn’t point us in either direction. Netflix greenlighting a third David Benioff and D.B. Weiss series under their $250MM deal is business as usual (The Chair, a new six-part series from showrunner Amanda Peet, is the third series).
Rather, it’s the timing of the announcement that points to questions about the execution risk: the Fortune article came one month after the news of Lin Qi’s death, and this Overstory news comes less than two months after the news.
A series built on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel seems ambitious on its own - a series built on a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and written while the same showrunners are working on a high-risk, three-part production in China seems unusually ambitious. Its emergence seems unusual at a time when we should be discussing Three-Body Problem.
Now, the caveat to all this is Overstory is “currently in development”, much like Three-Body Problem. Meaning, neither is close to reaching TV screens anytime soon - it could be years before we do.
But, if you were Netflix and promised investors and subscribers a big, bold, bet on owned and original IP like Three-Body Problem, and now that bet faces steeper execution risk than before, there is nothing wrong with the optics of hedging that bet with a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and the same development team behind it.
The only downside is, science fiction has proven to be a better bet for reaching audiences than Pulitzer Prize-winning novels: compare the movie version of Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Goldfinch ($9.9MM gross worldwide) to TENET ($363MM gross worldwide during a pandemic). So, Overstory is not a one-to-one replacement for Three-Body Problem.
There is one deeper issue here for execution risk of Three-Body Problem: China is not an optimal production partner for Netflix, both because its track record in producing blockbusters with Hollywood is subpar (Mulan under-performed in China, and Matt Damon vehicle The Great Wall is rumored to have lost its financiers $75MM), and because of its ongoing human rights issues in the Xinjiang region. Those two factors alone immediately surfaced as execution risks.
But China isn’t very good at cultural exports, either, as this NYT piece from 2017 ($ - paywalled) explains:
Some of China’s attempts to project cultural influence have stumbled. An ambitious initiative to set up Confucius Institutes on university campuses, for example, has attracted widespread criticism. And despite having made huge investments to build up its film industry, China has struggled to produce a big crossover hit since Ang Lee’s “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” in 2000. Even Zhang Yimou’s “The Great Wall”, thought to be China’s best shot in recent years at making a global blockbuster, mostly flopped at box offices outside China.
Will Netflix, Benioff and Weiss ever deliver Three-Body Problem to screens worldwide without Producer Lin Qi, its driving force?
Most likely, but probably not.
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