China's top animator Tian Xiaopeng and his animation studio announced that they will be producing the much-anticipated live action film, The Three-Body Problem, based on the award-winning sci-fi novel by Chinese writer Liu Cixin.

Tian created China's 3-D animation milestone Monkey King: Hero Is Back in 2015. It grossed (获利) 956 million yuan in China, becoming the highest-grossing Chinese animation in the country's film history at that time. It had held the record until 2019 when it got broken by Coloroom Pictures Ne Zha that grossed more than five billion yuan.

Book fans of The Three-Body Problem had mixed reactions after hearing about Tian's involvement. Some expressed doubt about a studio that specializes in animation making a live-action movie. Others also argued that the universe described in the novel is too big and complicated for any filmmakers to portray on big screens. But some seemed optimistic about the new adaption, noting the impressive track record of Tian's previous works.

The book series talks about how human beings respond to alien invasion. It was published in China between 2006 and 2010, and sold more than one million copies. The first book in the series was awarded the Chinese Science Fiction Galaxy Award in 

2006. In 2014, an English translation of the first book by Chinese-American author Ken Liu, titled The Three-Body Problem, was published. A year later, Liu Cixin became the first Asian author to win the Hugo Award, the highest honor in science fiction and fantasy writing. 

The book series has developed various art and entertainment forms including stage dramas and radio shows. During Spring Festival in 2019, Guo Fan's The Wandering Earth, a film also based on a novel by Liu Cixin, had made over 4. 6 billion yuan at the box office domestically. It ignited huge public interest in the film project of The Three-Body Problem.