Will Netflix mess up the "3 Body Problem"?
58
383
960
resolved Apr 25
Resolved
NO

The Three Body Problem is a popular sci-fi novel by Liu Cixin. Netflix trailer: https://www.netflix.com/nz/title/81024821

This resolves to yes if its IMDB rating is lower than 7 / 10 after a month of being fully released, OR if there is a significant departure from the novel. "Significant Departure" will be judged based of various sources, e.g. reddit, author, etc.

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Still 7.6 on IMDB after market close.

Resolution @Joshua?

Extending to April 21st, which I believe is one month after the show was released.

I just finished watching it and I thought it didn't have significant enough departures to count as being "messed up". I'll avoid trading here to be unbiased for any mod resolution required on that point.

IMO this should just resolve to the IMDB score though.

bought Ṁ100 NO

Currently a 7.6 on IMDB. I'm 4 episodes in and it's definitely good (although not EXTREMELY good). I don't know what "significant departure" means, but it's definitely staying true to the source material in spirit in my opinion. As for specific characters, they've sort of split the main character into 2 people (or rather given parts of their character arc to 2 people) but I don't think that qualifies as a "significant departure", but rather a common sense thing to do during an adaptation to round out the cast and allow for more dialogue and exposition (since it's hard to show people's thoughts on TV).

It's really good. They even kept the anti woke bits

there’s a shoutout to Manifold 8 minutes into the first episode, did anyone else catch that? 😆

There *is* a significant departure from the source, but that doesn't mean they're messing it up. I'm at least 80% sure it will be good, but I can't bet because the resolution criteria are conflicting.

Since the creator seems to be AFK, and It has not been released I am extending this market.
The creator can change it if needed.

@Indigo Can you please resolve?

I would use THE WANDERING EARTH as a comp. While it retained only the premise of Liu's story: have to move Earth, so engines are put on one side, then it must be slingshot around Jupiter; the movie was a lot of fun. Also Netflix did a great adaptation of SANDMAN and a pretty good one of LOCKE & KEY, and they had to have been alarmed by the awfulness that was RINGS OF POWER and learned from Apple how not to adapt a thinking person's SF work from FOUNDATION, so I think they will not mess it up.

Tremendous books, if you haven't read them. Follow them up with BALL LIGHTNING.

predicted NO

What does it say about the entertainment industry that, whenever something beloved gets an adaptation, rather than being excited about it, the first thing that comes to people's minds is, "Will they screw it up?"

@PlasmaBallin I think what it says is that you've reached a point where the industry concentration is high due to structural factors, and it's hard for any but a small set of well-capitalized firms to get their hands on big IP - so competitive pressures are relatively indirect and thus they're kinda . . . well, they're mostly shit these days.

If it helps, I think AI-driven tools are going to bring costs down enough for Hollywood to fragment and a lot more entrants to make it into the market. That's not going to help the IP problem though, so the adaptations for anything popular are probably still gonna be mediocre until the better labor field from having a wide base of smaller competitors brings the average talent at the big firms up.

bought Ṁ42 of NO

Part of me want's to hedge against it being bad, but I think 66% is way to high.

bought Ṁ33 of NO

Can you expand on significant departures? Almost every TV show has some type of "significant" departure from the original novel

@FernandoIrarrazaval it's somewhat of a soft definition, but something along the lines of what's happening to the Witcher TV series. The controversy on /r/witcher regarding the show, combined with Henry Cavil's thoughts arguably makes it a significant departure from what the franchise used to be.

Basically I'm just looking to avoid the condition where the show is successful / popular, but has almost nothing to do with the novel.

I'm open to suggestions.

predicted NO

@Indigo That makes sense, so this would be YES if there is a big significant departure. Maybe it would be helpful to have some examples? For example, would the level of change from GoT count as a significant departure (new characters, characters that died at different times from the book, some smaller storylines changed, but the main plot seemed to be the same)? From what you are saying it seems that no?

@FernandoIrarrazaval yeah, I think GoT is fine, it's still clearly that universe IMO, and the author was involved.

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