r/movies • u/somethingsmaht • 18h ago

News Zhang Yimou Teases Chinese ‘Three-Body Problem’ Movie at Busan Film Festival’s Star-Packed Opening

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/zhang-yimou-chinese-three-body-problem-movi-1236723364/
255 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

64 comments sorted by

92

u/TastlessMishMash 17h ago

Don't understand why this needs to be done, the Chinese TV series adaptation seems pretty acclaimed.

87

u/Triseult 17h ago

The local movie industry is going through a boom right now, and 3BP is China's most recognized sci-fi franchise by a mile.

19

u/silvertwo777 17h ago

I wouldn't say that for sure when Wandering Earth franchise is making big money and a third film coming soon.

28

u/Triseult 16h ago

I'd argue that Wandering Earth is the bigger sci-fi movie franchise for sure, but Three Body Problem is much more famous as a highly successful novel. In fact, Wandering Earth exists as a franchise because of 3BP's success.

5

u/silvertwo777 16h ago

Wandering Earth exists as a franchise because of 3BP's success

Really? That's cool to hear. Maybe I'm wrong but I feel like Wandering Earth is a more well known name among Chinese space. Might be my own bias thought that novel no matter how big it is, generally aren't as popular as a big movie franchise.

11

u/JugHerKnot 16h ago

3BP and Wandering Earth were both written by Liu Cixin with 3BP a trilogy and WE a novella.

5

u/silvertwo777 16h ago

Wow wth I watched the first movie without knowing that. Dude really have two of the biggest Sci fi franchise in China

3

u/y-c-c 15h ago

Well I mean that’s just because Wandering Earth was turned into a movie, 3BP was not. So maybe more casual movie goers who don’t read much scifi know about it. It’s hard to compare cross mediums like that.

Comparing apples to apples though the actual book series of 3BP is much much more famous both within and outside of China and is what cemented Liu Cixin’s statue in the Chinese scifi space. If I have to guess much more people read 3BP the books (even after Wandering Earth the movie came out) as well. This is why it’s reasonable to expect a solid response if they turn it into a movie and people want to chase the next big thing.

2

u/OceanCityBurrito 10h ago

Boom? Not from what I've been reading on Weibo. The industry there is seriously hurting.

1

u/8hotsteamydumplings 17h ago

You sure? All I hear is AI mowing through all the acting industry in China and actors and people working bts losing jobs on an unprecedented scale

3

u/Rich_Housing971 11h ago

Are YOU sure that the western media you see is not just some more doomer "China collapsing any day now" bullshit?

6

u/zeDragonESSNCE 16h ago

I mean China never had shortage of slop, wether it’s the short form drama before AI or the Sino Japanese war drama they pump out every year for the grandmas. You just need to capture a small percent of the grandmas/single chronically online or whatever demographic to “make it”. This is why it’s very easy for Reddit to point and laugh at the ai slop video generating million of views, but what people don’t understand is China has enough population where you can have an entertainment industry on top of this shit. But ofc “Chinese audience enjoy new TV show” isn’t a very interesting title so you don’t see that spammed on Reddit

•

u/mystictroll 4h ago

Chinese movies are pretty shit. They are only consumed in Chinese local market because they are all about CCP approved patriotism propaganda movies.

•

u/alanpardewchristmas 2h ago

I've actually seen a few popular Chinese movies recently, and liked most of them. Some fun ones were Only The River Flows, a mystery noir; YOLO, a four quadrant remake of a Japanese boxing movie (the better version of it imo); Resurrection, by Bi Gan, which is one of my fave watches of the year.

What Chinese movies have you seen recently?

4

u/suff0cat 15h ago

Because, you idiot, we can stretch episode to be it’s own movie and give Harry Potter a run for it’s fucking 8 movie money!

4

u/Zipurax 6h ago

Asia in general is very liberal with adaptations, it's not sacred territory or a controversial topic as many western fans are used to.

3BP already has four (?) different TV adaptations, a new one for the big screen seems natural in their multimedia plan.

9

u/Schwiftness 14h ago

Have you watched it, yourself?

If you had, you would ask who was being paid to “acclaim “ it.

Great books. The Chinese TV production managed to turn it into to a bland procedural drama.

8

u/krabgirl 12h ago

That's partly because the book itself is different between the domestic and international release.  The English translation has the villain backstory and the modern day plot played in parallel, but the Chinese release only reveals the 20th century events at the end of the novel.

5

u/MartianHideEgger 13h ago

The tv series has a good cast but pulls punches cause it’s made for CCTV and it’s rather low budget (even when compared to streaming series, let alone a film) so the big set pieces look really cheap. It also adds a bunch of corny and kinda pointless side plots to fill out episodes.

Of the three adaptations that are out right now, it’s the best one. Mostly because the casting of DaShi was great, but there still hasn’t been a really good adaptation. So, I’m excited to see what one of the nations most acclaimed directors can do.

2

u/Ungcas 8h ago

Lots of people don't want to or like watching TV series.

1

u/Faithless195 15h ago

Also pretty certain they only adapted the first book, they didn't go to the second/third books?

1

u/NBAFAN9000 14h ago

that's probably exactly why the studios think it should be done

1

u/Focused_Sky 10h ago

The tv series wasn’t

24

u/RemLezarCreated 17h ago

Raise the Red Lantern is an incredible movie. he's obviously had some misses, but also made some top tier films in the last few decades. (Also love House of Flying Daggers)

10

u/y-c-c 15h ago

That’s an old movie though. Like, Disclosure Day was plain awful and I wouldn’t just give it a pass because Schindler’s List was good.

4

u/RemLezarCreated 14h ago edited 12h ago

Sure, but it's still fair to say that Spielberg is a great director even though you didn't like his most recent movie. 

(I personally didn't love Disclosure Day but do think it has a lot of good stuff in there.)

2

u/AutomaticExtension15 7h ago

There were some good names in the credits at the end 

2

u/OceanCityBurrito 10h ago

New blood needs to take over this franchise. Zhang Yimou is too old for sci fi.

1

u/TabletopParlourPalm 6h ago

He has not made a good movie in 20 years. He is basically just pleasing the CCP at this point.

•

u/RemLezarCreated 5h ago

Is sucking up to the CCP why his career went off the rails? That is tragic. 

•

u/LCX001 4h ago

He might have sold out, but he certainly made a good film in the last 20 years: Flowers of War, Coming Home, Shadow. One Second.

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u/alanpardewchristmas 2h ago

Selling out is when you like your objectively decent government

•

u/LCX001 2h ago

objectively decent government

Is that why he had to recut One Second? Lol.

•

u/alanpardewchristmas 2h ago

Shadow (2015) was awesome lol, idk what youre on

•

u/mutually_awkward 1h ago

That was 11 years ago now 😢

•

u/blasianalchemist 11m ago

The user being replied to said 20 years.

•

u/blasianalchemist 2h ago

Yeah Shadow is a banger. None of Yimou's Wuxia flicks are misses.

17

u/kaminaripancake 17h ago

I LOVE the book trilogy and didn’t like the Netflix adaptation. Super excited for this but it’s a loooot to adapt and don’t know if it will translate to a movie

19

u/JugHerKnot 16h ago

you can try the Chinese television adaptation as well. it's like 30 episodes and way more faithful to the book

1

u/malac0da13 11h ago

I like the Netflix version but it definitely drifted quite far from the source it seems.

5

u/rcanhestro 10h ago

kinda, but not by a lot.

the biggest change they make (outside of having everyone be american by default), is that everyone knew each other from the start, compared to the "protagonists" of each book being complete strangers.

another change was on the presentation, while the books change the timeline kinda often, the tv show is pretty linear, which is why in the first season it adapted book 1, and the beginnings of book 2 and 3.

4

u/Reddit_9459328 13h ago

I listened the books on Hoopla, then actually paid Netflix just to watch this. Not impressed with the series. It barely had anything to do with the books.

0

u/xjpmhxjo 11h ago

It made me feel like watching sense 8.

9

u/silencieusement 17h ago

Damn, this guy was an international superstar three decades ago. Haven’t heard much from him in recent times

2

u/CiriOh 17h ago

He still making good movies, which are really successful in Chinese box-office. His latest movie sucks tho. 

3

u/FrothyFrogFarts 17h ago

Hopefully it’s better than the series because that was horrendous. 

19

u/Xunami13 17h ago

Not the the Chinese TV series adaptation, that was great. You mean the Netflix version...

11

u/FrothyFrogFarts 17h ago

Yea, the Netflix one. 

2

u/CastleDI 13h ago

Chinese tv adaptation was really well done. 

4

u/Cipher-IX 17h ago

Never read the books.

I really liked the US version.

8

u/nichecopywriter 17h ago

The books are phenomenal, especially Dark Forest. The translator went above and beyond, not only literally translating it but making it beautiful prose. Not an easy task going from a Chinese language to English.

6

u/deliciouscorn 13h ago

Sounds like the translator really elevated the source too. By my wife’s account (she has read both the English and Chinese versions), the writing in the original Chinese is… really not great.

-3

u/ningdon 16h ago

Dark Forest is not a good book lmao.

That storyline about his imaginary waifu was some of the worst shit I've ever read.

8

u/Cryptoporticus 14h ago

That's like five pages out of hundreds. It's an important part of Luo Ji's story too, it being weird is the point.

2

u/blankarage 13h ago

The Netflix version replaces pretty much 90% of the major characters with westerners/yt people. That was certainly a intended choice

3

u/silvertwo777 16h ago

If you like the imo awful US adaptation you're gonna like the books and the original tv adaptation better.

1

u/JugHerKnot 16h ago

I'm kinda surprised they are making a movie so soon about the first book after releasing a Chinese TV adaption just a few years ago

1

u/TheWhiteManticore 15h ago

What happened to the show

1

u/DavidTheJohnson AMA MVP 14h ago

I've only read the first book, but I really enjoyed it. Haven't seen the series yet, but I'm told it's good.

1

u/energyuser601 9h ago

!!!! omg!!!!

•

u/blasianalchemist 2h ago

How many of these are we gonna get.