The annual report of light shows that "Three-body" (new) is in the early planning stage.
Special feature of 1905 film network The movie "Three-body" is coming! In the 2019 annual report released recently, Light Media mentioned that there are currently 40 films in the preparation/production stage, among which "Three-body" is impressively listed, and the word "new" in brackets is fascinating.
At the same time, producer Bai Yiqi also revealed the latest progress of the "Three-body" series at the Young Producers Forum of the 2020 Spring Fair held recently: it will start shooting in June.
Coupled with the 9.7-point animation "My Three-body Chapter Beihai Biography" which exploded in the circle of friends at the beginning of the year, the "Three-body" animation which released PV last year, and the "Three-body" radio drama and cartoon, illustration set, physical exhibition and other forms, a more grand and three-dimensional "Three-body Universe" is quietly rising inside and outside the big screen, and it has also accumulated valuable experience for the development of domestic sci-fi IP.
"seven-year dystocia" and "new trisomy"
The film "Three-body", which was established in 2013 and started in 2015, is still a permanent injury in the hearts of many filmmakers and sci-fi fans.
In 2009, Liu Cixin sold the film adaptation right of the novel Three-body to director Panpan Zhang at a price close to that of cabbage. In 2014, this right was transferred to the Youzu Film Industry.
Although China Film has expressed its willingness to buy the adaptation rights of Three-body, there are also rumors that Amazon has invested huge sums of money to win the adaptation rights in 2018, but today, the "control" of the global film and television adaptation of Three-body is still firmly in the hands of the tourist film industry.
At the end of 2014, Youzu Film Company announced that "Three-body" would be put on the big screen and directed by Panpan Zhang. It plans to adapt three novels into six series films, with a single investment of more than 200 million yuan. Subsequently, the film released the cast led by William Feng, Zhang Jingchu, WU GANG, Tang Yan, Du Chun, Hans Zhang and Zhang Guangbei.
Judging from the main creative line-up, director Panpan Zhang’s previous representative works are thrillers such as the first class, and he lacks experience in handling such a large amount of science fiction films. It can be said that since the establishment of the project, the film "Three-body" has been questioned.
In August 2015, the real-life shooting part of the first part of "Three-body" was officially finished, which also opened the most difficult post-production process. In the meantime, although there are many materials exposed, it is accompanied by countless true and false rumors and storms such as "special effects are not as expected, materials are scrapped, teams are replaced in the later period, and core creators leave".
"Three-body" shooting scene photo
In November, 2016, producer Kong Xiangzhao released Weibo’s statement that "Three-body film will definitely come out within one year", but more than three years have passed in a blink of an eye, and he himself has left the Youzu film industry.
Director Panpan Zhang’s official Weibo also stayed in the June 2016 "rumor" copy. In the comment area, there are still fans who "greet" regularly. "Big Brother, it’s been four years. Why hasn’t the movie been released yet?"
For this "six-year" dystocia film "Three-body", Light once participated in this project in the form of "investment+distribution", but in the film list of the semi-annual report in 2019, this project was once removed.
Nowadays, "Three-body" has returned to the film list with a "new" word, and it is listed as being in the early stage of planning, which may mean that the film version of "Three-body" will change its course and go into battle again.
The heroine of the original "Three-body" movie was Zhang Jingchu.
Weibo, the official of "Three-body Comics", also issued a document on April 26th, saying: "The new" Three-body Comics "film will start shooting: it will be prepared for four years, and the director (unpublished) hopes that the special effects of the picture can restore the scenes shown in the novel."
In the upsurge that swept the film market, the hasty launch of "Three-body" was more like the product of the birth of capital. At that time, both the director, the producer and the China market were far from having the experience and strength to control such a magnitude project as Three-body film, and failure and stranding were inevitable.
Nowadays, with the success and the maturity of the whole industrial chain of domestic sci-fi movies, the time for "Three-body" movies to "come to life" may be coming.
"three-body universe"
After the film version of "Three-body", in recent years, the tourist film industry is gradually adjusting the development model of "Three-body", an IP-rich mine. From animation, radio drama, immersion exhibition to drama, film and derivative development, a more systematic and three-dimensional "three-body universe" is taking shape.
1. drama series
The TV series Three-body was officially established in May 2019, with 24 episodes and a production cycle of 12 months. It is not difficult to see from the summary that the plot will revolve around the first novel of Three-body. According to producer Bai Yiqi, the drama version will start shooting in June this year.
In the interview, Bai Yiqi once bluntly said that it is not difficult to adapt the script of Three-body. "First, the story is jumping and changing back and forth in several time and space; Second, there is no serious female number one and no CP. " However, he also said that compared with the latter two films, the first film has relatively few high-concept elements, so it is a wise choice to start from this.
Due to the epidemic, the boot time was extended from March to June, which also gave the team more time to read and polish the script. How the drama story will unfold, and which actors will join in, so we are looking forward to it.
2. Animation
At the beginning of this year, "My Three-body Chapter Beihai Biography" was officially launched in bilibili, and it continued to be screened, with a total broadcast volume of 31.345 million times. It was successfully circled with the excellent reputation of bilibili’s 9.9 points and Douban’s 9.7 points, and was widely reported by the media. Frankly speaking: "Three-body" was finally filmed! "
Biography of Zhang Beihai is the third part of my three-body series. In the first film in 2014, the director was still an animation layman. With a passion for "Three-body", he made this "rice animation" by himself. Although the painting style was rough, it unexpectedly won the praise of fans and attracted the attention of the tourist film industry.
The first part of My Three-body is relatively rough.
In 2016, the "Wandering in All directions" team officially joined the tourist film industry, and successively released Biography of Luo Ji and Biography of Zhang Beihai, completing the identity transformation from grassroots to regular army, and also realizing the "explosion" visible to the naked eye in animation technology.
According to reports, the production cost of Zhang Beihai Biography has increased to 30,000 to 40,000 yuan a minute. The "Doomsday Battle" scene, which was the most amazing scene for fans, lasted for ten minutes, and it took a year to polish it.
What’s more worth mentioning is that the Biography of Zhang Beihai does not stick to the original work, but breaks and reconstructs the original narrative with characters as clues, and reasonably adds new plots to make the characters fuller.
Zhang Beihai Biography adds childhood stories and makes the characters more stereoscopic.
A "natural selection number, forward four!" It triggered a collective "climax" in the barrage area. With the seemingly simple square figures, the epic and tragic colors of the original work are captured, which is the real reason why Me Three conquered fans.
The unprecedented success of the "rice system" animation has also made fans feel sorry for the "regular army" — — Three-body Universe, Art Painting Kaitian and bilibili jointly developed the animated version of Three-body, which raised the expected value.
In June last year, the first concept propaganda video of "Three-body" was exposed, which triggered a heated discussion. The video condenses several classic pictures in the novel "Three-body", especially in the second "Dark Forest".
"Space Elevator" in Concept Video
Although the artistic style and special effects of the promotional film are still in the conceptual stage, the design of "space elevator" and "space station" still makes sci-fi fans see sincerity. Only the last sentence: "I, Luo Ji, who faces the wall, now speak to the three-body world." It is enough to make fans’ blood boil.
At the beginning of this year, Art Painting Kaitian Studio in Wuhan also reported the safety to fans through VLOG, saying that all the staff were healthy and well. The script development, art design and asset development of "Three-body" animated drama are progressing steadily and will meet with netizens as planned in 2021.
Xu Yao, CEO of Three-body Universe, once said: "Animation has its own unique form of expression compared with conventional live-action movies. In particular, an IP with a large number of high-concept pictures like a three-body will be bound by real-life performance. "
Now it seems that the animated version of "Three-body" is expected to "shine into reality" earlier than the real-life version, but it is still not easy to animate the grand world view of "Three-body". Polishing the script and restoring the original spirit of Three-body is a more important measure than the technical level.
3. Radio dramas, cartoons and more
In addition to the above-mentioned film and television adaptation, the "Three-body Radio Drama" project, which is a cooperation between the Three-body Universe and the Himalayas, has also received favorable comments since it was launched in December last year. The number of listeners exceeded 18 million and the number of subscriptions exceeded 400,000.
There are 6 seasons and 80 episodes of radio drama, each episode is 30 minutes. Such a long serial is rare in the domestic audio industry. The dubbing team is the top 729 workshop in the industry. The famous voice actor Ajie voiced Wang Miao in it.
On the basis of being faithful to the original work, the radio drama divides and reorganizes the plot, cuts out a large section of inner monologues and professional introductions, focuses on vivid dialogues, and cooperates with multi-level sound effects to enable the audience to "enter the play in one second". Even Liu Cixin praised the radio drama as "both familiar and fresh."
In addition, Tencent’s animation platform launched the comic version of "Three-body" last year, and the sales volume of "Three-body Art Illustration Collection" also exceeded 30,000 copies. In January this year, the large-scale immersion exhibition project of Santi also landed in Shanghai. The Three-body Universe also launched the official flagship store of the Three-body to develop and sell derivatives, with more than 16,000 fans.
Three-body cartoon
"Three-body" official flagship store
The novel Three-body with more than 800,000 words constructs an incomparably grand view of the world, and also provides a vast imagination space for IP development.
If "filmization" is the tip of the pyramid of IP development, then more down-to-earth efforts are needed in the process of climbing the ladder. Once upon a time, quick success and instant benefit were not desirable. From easy to difficult, from simple to complex, systematic and sustainable development is the right way.
Facing the dystocia of the movie "Three-body", Liu Cixin, the original author, is particularly indifferent: "Science fiction movies involve a lot of money and special effects, which take time. Asimov’s series, Arthur Clarke’s Meet Rama, and many other authors’ works, many of which have been in film and television operation for forty or fifty years now. My work has not been running for a long time. "
To quote the saying from Galaxy the legend of heroes that science fiction fans often talk about: "Our journey is a sea of stars", and now it is only the first step of the long March.