Netflix has been called out by five U.S. Senators in a joint letter addressed to Netflix CCO and co-CEO Ted Sarandos for something other than “Cuties” – specifically one of their upcoming sci-fi projects.
Earlier this year it was announced that the streamer planned to adapt Chinese author Liu Cixin’s immensely popular sci-fi trilogy “The Three-Body Problem,” which deals with humanity’s first contact with an alien civilization. The project is being handled by former “Game of Thrones” showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
According to the letter the issue is that Liu has “parroted” China’s communist party talking points with regard to the ongoing situation in its Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region – the same area Disney’s “Mulan” got into serious trouble in regards to filming some scenes there. They say “the decision to produce an adaptation of Mr. Liu’s work can be viewed as such normalization [for the crimes going on there].”
Their reasoning ties specifically to an interview Liu gave to the New Yorker in 2019 and they say “there no longer exist corporate decisions of complacency, only complicity.” Liu is also the author of the short story upon which Chinese blockbuster “The Wandering Earth” was based, a film which grossed over $690 million in China and which Netflix picked up.
Source: Deadline
