The Three-Body Problem series 'pushes a lot of the same buttons' as Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones TV series creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff don't currently have plans to return to the world of Westeros to work on any of the planned spin-offs, but Weiss says their new show "pushes a lot of the same buttons" as the HBO fantasy epic.

The creative pair, who struck a deal with Netflix to develop multiple projects, are currently filming a series based on The Three-Body Problem sci-fi book trilogy in London.

It's "very different from Game of Thrones but in the same general zone," Weiss tells EW in an interview about Metal Lords, the high school-set film he wrote for Netflix. "It's like a science-fiction show that is painted on a very large canvas of space and time. It's as visual effects heavy as Thrones was, and it pushes a lot of the same buttons in many ways that Thrones pushed — and doesn't push others in many ways."

Chinese author Cixin Liu penned The Three-Body Problem and its sequels, The Dark Forest and Death's End. The first book, published in 2008, tells of humanity's first contact with aliens. Against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, an alien civilization on the brink of collapse receives signals sent out into space by a secret military project on Earth and now has plans to invade the planet.

The Three-Body Project TV series was "the main thing" Weiss says he and Benioff wanted to do once they cemented their relationship with Netflix.

"We lived in that world [of Game of Thrones] literally and figuratively for a long, long time," he explains. "It just felt like, for us, it was time to move on and get excited and terrified about building something else — building lots of something elses."

With the release of Metal Lords coming in April, Weiss speaks more generally about the benefits of tackling high-concept fantasy and sci-fi versus smaller-scale real-world stories.

"If you're dealing with reality, it's so much easier to get things wrong. Nobody can really say, 'Well, that's not how they would do things in Westeros,' because there is no Westeros," he remarks. "But if somebody acts in a way that people in a university or high school or office building just don't act, now it just feels false to everybody."

"In a way there are far fewer places to hide in a high school," he continues. "If something's not working, you can't say a giant visual effects extravaganza is gonna come along in five minutes and wipe their memory of that scene, sweep it out to sea with the dragons and demons and aliens. Those giant, horrible, wonderful artificial creations aren't there to save you."

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