What's it like to be a second banana? The bit role player? The calefare? We get a peek at the life of the background actors with the Interior Chinatown trailer. In it, Jimmy O Yang plays Willis Wu, who feels that there's more to his station than meets the eye. When Chloe Bennet's Detective Lana Li enlists his help in her case, Willis sees this as an opportunity to break free from his "Generic Asian Man" role.

Based on Charles Yu’s award-winning novel of the same name, the 10-episode series trailer looks like it combines kung fu, noir, police procedural, some romance, and a whole lot of weirdness. Interior Chinatown also stars Ronnie Chieng, Tzi Ma, Archie Kao, and Lisa Gilroy.

While Interior Chinatown is filled with a mostly Asian cast that skewers the stereotypes that Hollywood loves to utilise, it is also about finding one's identity in a sea of tropes. The book was written in a screenplay format, which felt like the normal transition for an adaptation to the big screen... but the novel was perfect on its own. Can this series do it justice?

With the author, Charles Yu, acting as Interior Chinatown's showrunner (Yu was also the story editor for HBO's Westworld) and Taika Waititi directing the pilot, the odds for the show being a runaway hit look really good.

I guess, we'll find out when all episodes of Interior Chinatown are released 19 November on Disney+.

Adaptation of a book can be a herculean task. And none more daunting than Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem. As the first instalment of a trilogy, Liu's Three-Body, it will take a deft hand to adapt it to a different medium. Our trepidations are allayed when news broke that David Benioff and DB Weiss—who were behind HBO's Game of Thrones—will handle Three-Body. (Hopefully, it won't falter like GoT's final season but that's another story.)

Joined by Alexander Woo, who co-created The Terror, Benioff and Weiss will use the suicides in the scientific community as a jumping point for 3 Body Problem. At least, according to the full-length trailer that just dropped (a teaser was shown at last year's Tudum event). With Liu's blessings, 3 Body Problem will have narrative tweaks to the adaptation. Stuff like chronological shifts and characters and the setting being in the present-day UK. The trailer has Radiohead's "Everything in its Place" playing hauntingly in the background. Benedict Wong, plays the detective assigned to the case. As the trailer progresses, he recruits a scientist, Auggie Salazar (played by Eiza González), to assist him.

But this premise of weird deaths soon explodes into something far-reaching. And something beyond the ken of human experience as we stand at the precipice of an extraterrestrial invasion. Netflix commissioned eight episodes of 3 Body Problem. With an average of USD25 million spent on each episode, this series will be Netflix's most expensive production to date. It will also be the second-most expensive behind Amazon's The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power.

3 Body Problem premieres March 21 2024 on Netflix.