That’s the core issue with any adaptation — make it too similar and audiences have no reason to watch, but make it too different and the fans might hate it.
Benioff and Weiss hope that, if their take on “3 Body Problem” is successful and gets to tell the full story, it will somehow prove that you don’t need to adapt things literally. The problem is that this is not really a good comparison between either this show and “Game of Thrones” or even between this and the previous adaptation. The Chinese TV adaptation was made with a much smaller budget and without the global reach of a platform like Netflix, so there’s no way to compare their audience reception.
Meanwhile, the “Game of Thrones” seasons that audiences and critics disliked the most were not ones that deviated from the books, but ones that had no source material to fall back on. Whether or not we ever see George R. R. Martin release his version of the story’s end, audiences still did not like the direction Benioff and Weiss took with the story once they had no more books to adapt.
As for “3 Body Problem,” it remains to be seen whether it will be another big hit like early “Game of Thrones,” or if it launches without any fanfare when it gets released on Netflix on March 21, 2024