Amazon May Spend $1 Billion To Adapt Chinese Sci-Fi Trilogy The Three-Body Problem

We thought Amazon's Lord of the Rings TV series sounded like an expensive get, but apparently the company is just getting started.

According to a report by Financial Times, Amazon is currently in the midst of negotiations that will "probably result" in the company earmarking one billion dollars for the rights to a Hugo Award-winning science fiction property. Reportedly, the company is currently seeking to produce a three-season television series based off of the Chinese sci-fi trilogy The Three Body Problem by Liu Cixin.

The series (which is actually called Remembrance of Earth's Past, but commonly referred to by the first book's title) is a Chinese bestseller, with hundreds of thousands of copies having been sold in its home nation alone. Apparently, the series is enough of a hit sensation that Amazon is willing to put up a jaw-dropping ten digits for the rights to the series.

The books, which focus on the last members of a dying race that begins to communicate with Earth during the nation's Cultural Revolution between 1966 and 1976, are sometimes credited with starting a resurgence of the sci-fi genre in China after years spent lying dormant.

The first two books in the series, The Three-Body Problem and The Dark Forest, were published in 2008, with the final book, Death's End, being released in 2010. All three books in the series were translated into English between 2014 and 2016, with the first book's translation winning the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Amazon is currently openly looking for the next Game of Thrones, moving away from its older model of creator-driven small comedies and dramas toward massive-budget event programming with the biggest pieces of intellectual property it can get. 

This move is clearly a step in that direction, but whether The Three-Body Problem or The Lord of the Rings will really have what it takes to pick up the torch from Game of Thrones when that series leaves the air is something we won't know until the shows are rolling out. Either way, we'll keep you posted on Amazon's progress, as well as any other ambitious plans they may hatch during their quest for the cultural zeitgeist.