If you could predict which title will be the next model for Netflix, The problem of the 3 bodies would take all the ballots. It is the series that aims to sweep consumption data on the platform in the style of Stranger things, Wednesday and The Squid Game. The sum is simple. It is based on a cult literary trilogy, that of Ciu Lixin, which sets the action in the Chinese Cultural Revolution when the astrophysicist Ye Wenjie receives a message from Trisolaris, a planet with three suns and where its emperor does not conceive of democracy.
It is written by two specialists in complex literary adaptations: D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, the people in charge of Game of Thrones, who closed a 200 million dollar agreement with the company to develop exclusive series for them (and this is the only project they have underway). And, to finish off the play, the first trailer confirms what the public could imagine: Netflix has spared no resources to set the fiction at the time and create a new fictional universe. If there is a series that can make you rethink the platform's broadcast model, it is this one.
From Netflix it has always been defended that its model is based on releasing a few episodes at once in order to "promote substantial commitment" from subscribers and above all to give the consumer the option of viewing the content at the rate they prefer. It must also be recognized that this consumer "right to choose" served to justify the arrival of an ad-supported subscription plan, an idea that had always been discarded, so it is a flexible principle.
However, in recent times, the behavior of the company has hinted that the marathon model is not as infallible as it was tried to sell. First it was Money Heist and Ozark who aired their last seasons in two batches, then Stranger Things aired the final two episodes of the fourth season a month late, Sandman surprised with an additional episode days after its first season premiered suddenly. , and now series like The Witcher or You broadcast their seasons split in two.
It does not go unnoticed that, since Netflix only assesses the viewings during the first 28 days of the episodes on the platform, this strategy makes up the data: it opens a larger consumption window, which should not see the complete season of a series in four weeks if you want all your hours to count toward the final list. Just so we're clear, subscribers had four weeks to watch the first seven episodes of Stranger Things Season 4, and then they had another four weeks to watch the final two episodes (with one of them lasting nearly two and a half hours). Could Millie Bobby Brown and Winona Ryder top the list of the most watched English-language series in Netflix history if it weren't for this scheduling maneuver?
But, even understanding that the titles cut in half benefit from an image level, the decision seems to obey another more substantial objective: not to burn their most ambitious cartridges in a weekend or ten days. The premiere in two batches, as we mentioned, allowed Netflix to have two clear communicative impacts, channeling part of the conversation: the Stranger Things break placed viewers in a situation of equality when facing the premiere, contributing to their they could discuss the plots developed to date and speculate on what kind of ending the story would have. With The 3-Body Problem, the idea of broadcasting it directly week by week may be the best option for Netflix to have a phenomenon on its hands, uniting the media and the public in a debate on theories, scenes, the themes that blossom from the plot, the episodes as the television artistic unity.
One only has to remember the last time Benioff and Weiss had a series on the air: part of the success of Game of Thrones lay in analyzing each scene, giving fans a week of time to speculate about the mythology of the Seven Kingdoms, contributing to the appearance of memes on social networks, leaving unknowns in the air that could not be resolved after fifteen seconds. In addition, HBO, which has always had the weekly broadcast model as its philosophy, has been able to repeat the success with its two new series based on powerful intellectual properties.
The house of the dragon and The last of us knew how to monopolize the conversation during their respective broadcasts. Trusting in the quality of his bets, he allowed critics and the most dedicated sector of the public to assess the narrative decisions of Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann week by week. And why do I speak precisely of these examples? Because they coincide with The problem of the 3 bodies in the formula of using a beloved intellectual property and that arouses expectation, a creative tandem that indicates that quality and the ideal budget are sought to convey that it is a great bet. It's hard sci-fi, part of a different cultural context (sci-fi far removed from the Western gaze!) and features three faces from Game of Thrones that Benioff and Weiss wanted to repeat: John Bradley, Liam Cunningham and Jonathan Pryce.
Bearing in mind that streaming platforms are in the cutting phase, assuming that they should better focus their production efforts and avoid stuffing (or at least those productions that do not interest the public or do not add to the brand image), The 3-body problem might be a good subject to experiment with and see if Netflix can be built from the weekly conversation.
It must also be remembered that screenwriters in the United States are on strike right now after denouncing that streaming has made the job precarious to the point of jeopardizing its viability. In an industrial context in which it would be fair to recognize the work of creators, the “less is more” applied to television series may become imperative, which in turn corresponds to an audience saturated with so much offer. In this way, if The 3-Body Problem offers plots, characters, production values, and topics to discuss, the viewer will be able to experience the phenomenon in community beyond imitating a dance on TikTok (like Jenna Ortega's on Wednesday) or put on an eighties theme (like Running up that hill from Stranger things), which right now seems to be the only thing Netflix series are good for.
