Posted in: TV | Tagged: 3 Body Problem
3 Body Problem Season 2 Production Officially Underway; Casting News
The second season of Netflix's 3 Body Problem has officially started production, and we have some new casting news to pass along.
Article Summary
- 3 Body Problem Season 2 has officially begun production in Budapest, with an even bigger scale than before.
- The new season will take the story in a more cosmic, dramatic direction as promised by the creators.
- Alfie Allen, David Yip, and Jordan Sunshine join the cast, alongside Claudia Doumit and Ellie De Lange.
- It will be interesting to see if the series can recapture viewers after a three-year break between seasons.
Production on the second season of Netflix's 3 Body Problem, adapted from Cixin Liu's popular novels, has officially – finally! – begun in Budapest, Hungary. The series was renewed for seasons 2 and 3 in May, and the second season is expected to be even larger in scale. The series' return was first announced during the Netflix Upfront presentation in New York City on May 15, with Netflix's chief content officer, Bela Bajaria, confirming the additional seasons. At that time, the executive producers shared a statement saying that, "Ever since we read the last page of Cixin Liu's magnificent trilogy, we hoped we'd be able to bring the audience to the end of the universe with us. Here we go!"
3 Body Problem explores how humanity chooses to respond to its gravest threat. Starting off during China's Cultural Revolution in the '60s, the series introduces Ye Wenjie, a young woman who'll go on to make a fateful decision that reverberates across space and time into the present day. When the laws of nature inexplicably unravel, a tight-knit group of brilliant scientists known as the Oxford Five must join forces with an unflinching detective and a mysterious intelligence agency to save the world.
"The tone really changes once you get to the second season," co-creators, writers, and executive producers David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo said. "It's much bigger. Things get wilder, the conflicts get more cosmic. Once people see it on the screen, they're going to understand why we've been so excited for this season, in particular."
During the official Television Academy 3 Body Problem panel at the Netflix FYSEE space at Sunset Las Palmas in Los Angeles on May 31st, executive producers, showrunners, and writers Weiss and Benioff, and Woo shared that they're excited to finish telling the mind-bending story that they intended. "We included a lot of what we loved from the novels by Cixin Liu in Season 1, but the vast majority of reasons we wanted to make this show are in Season 2," Weiss said. "We always wanted to get to the final page of the third book, and it's really, really thrilling to us that we will get to do just that."
Oh, and Alfie Allen has joined the cast starting in Season 2. There's no word on who he's playing yet. He will probably not get castrated as he was on Game of Thrones. Also, David Yip (The Chinese Detective) and Jordan Sunshine (Wonder Pets) have joined the cast, with the trio's casting following the news earlier this week that Claudia Doumit and Ellie De Lange had joined the streaming series adaptation.
This is all well and good, but will viewers come back after three years? Will they still be interested? Will fans of the books be the core audience, no matter how much they object to the changes? Then again, the Chinese adaptation of the books has been shooting Three Body: Da Shi, an original miniseries that bridges the gap between the first and second books, before the Chinese adaptation of the second book gets underway.
3 Body Problem Season 1 is streaming on Netflix.
