General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20266 min read

Ball Lightning (球状闪电_(电视剧))

Ball Lightning (球状闪电) is an upcoming Chinese science fiction web drama adapted from Liu Cixin's novel of the same name, produced by iQIYI with Yitong Production (壹同制作) and Dream Media (梦想传媒), supervised by Chen Sicheng and directed by Dai Mo.¹ The series stars Tong Yao, Wang Anyu, and Yang Lixin, with Zhou Yiwei and Ding Yongdai in featured roles.² It was filmed in 2022, received its distribution license in mid-2025, and released its first trailer in September 2026 as part of iQIYI's 2027 slate; a broadcast date has not been announced.³^•⁴

Key fact	Detail
Source material	Liu Cixin's 2004 novel Ball Lightning (球状闪电), widely regarded as a prequel to The Three-Body Problem⁵
Format	30-episode web drama, 45 minutes per episode¹^•⁵
Key creatives	Supervisor and co-writer Chen Sicheng; director Dai Mo; screenwriter Wang Yedan¹^•⁵
Main cast	Tong Yao as Lin Yun, Wang Anyu as Chen Guang, Yang Lixin as Zhang Bin, Zhou Yiwei as Ding Yi, Ding Yongdai as Lin Feng²
Production timeline	Began filming April 2022; wrapped 27 August 2022⁶
Censorship status	Distribution license granted in Q2 2025; episode count cut from 36 to 30¹^•⁴
Current status	First trailer released 23 September 2026; listed in iQIYI's 2027 slate, air date pending³

Spoilers

Story of the series

The drama opens with the teenage Chen Guang (Wang Anyu) encountering a ball lightning on his fourteenth birthday, an event that orphans him and sets him on a search for the truth. In his research he joins Major Lin Yun (Tong Yao) and a scientific team as they break through bottlenecks in ball lightning research, but the group splits over the development of "new concept weapons". When a crisis from an extraterrestrial civilization arrives, the characters reunite to confront global anomalies. The series also addresses the dual nature of scientific application and weaves quantum physics into its themes.⁵

A notable change from the book is the protagonist's name: in the novel he is called only "Dr. Chen" and is never given a full name, while the drama names him Chen Guang.⁷

Cast and characters

The announced lineup, credited in the order used by the production:⁹^•²

Tong Yao as Lin Yun (林云), the military officer at the center of the weapons research storyline
Wang Anyu as Chen Guang (陈光), the protagonist whose parents are killed by ball lightning
Yang Lixin as Zhang Bin (张彬)
Zhou Yiwei as Ding Yi (丁仪), the physicist from the novel who also appears in The Three-Body Problem
Ding Yongdai as Lin Feng (林峰)
Yang Le as Zhang Hefu (张赫夫) and Feng Wenjuan as Zheng Min (郑敏), with Wang Yang and a group of featured players including Feng Jiayi, Ruan Ju, Chen Hao, Zhou Chuchu, Guo Jinglin, and Xiong Xin

Screenwriter Wang Yedan said in an interview that adapting the novel's science-heavy imagination, including quantum states, bubbles, and macro-electrons drawing on meteorology and quantum physics, was the team's chief worry in early development; Chen Sicheng's advice to the writers was to "first spread the wings of imagination, then let it fly along a scientific trajectory".⁵

Source novel

The series adapts Liu Cixin's long-form novel Ball Lightning, first published in July 2004, two years before The Three-Body Problem began serialization. The novel follows a protagonist whose parents are killed by a ball lightning strike on his fourteenth birthday, after which he devotes himself to researching the phenomenon. In the course of the story he meets Lin Yun, a military officer obsessed with weapons, and Ding Yi, a scientist absorbed in research, and the narrative ends with the image of the "quantum rose".⁵

Liu Cixin recorded in the novel's afterword that he witnessed ball lightning in Handan, Hebei province, in the summer of 1981, an orange-red glowing sphere floating under a tree after a lightning strike, and that this experience seeded the book.⁵ The novel is regarded as a prequel to The Three-Body Problem: it contains a plot element in which scientists infer the existence of a "super observer" watching Earth, a setup that echoes the sophon concept of the later trilogy, and its characters Ding Yi and Lin Yun connect directly into The Three-Body Problem.⁷^•⁵

Production history

A long wait between filming and release. The project was filed as a web drama and entered production in 2022, with a stated production cycle of 12 months.⁵ iQIYI released a concept poster in April 2022, filming began that month, and the series wrapped in August 2022, with the wrap officially announced on 27 August 2022.¹^•⁶ In April 2024, director Dai Mo said at a film industry event that the series was in post-production.⁸

Changes in format and channel. Early plans called for a 36-episode series broadcast on CCTV with simultaneous iQIYI streaming, and the project appeared on CCTV's 2024 drama slate.⁴ In June 2025, the national broadcast regulator's planning adjustment notice changed the episode count from 36 to 30, and the series passed review and obtained its distribution license in the same quarter.⁴^•¹ On 25 September 2025, more than three years after the wrap announcement, the official account announced the full creative and cast lineup, and the hashtag used was "web drama Ball Lightning", marking a shift from the earlier TV-plus-streaming plan to a pure web release on iQIYI.⁶^•⁴

Promotion in 2026. Promotion accelerated through 2026: the official Douyin account opened in January, the series appeared at the iQIYI World Conference in April, a Beijing screening event was held in June, and character cards were released around the iQIYI 717 member festival in July.⁴ On 23 September 2026, iQIYI released the first story trailer as part of its 2027 slate, with the tagline framing the story as a contest between human nature and scientific research.³^•⁹ As of mid-August 2026 the official position on the air date remained "to be determined".⁴

Context among Liu Cixin adaptations

The series sits within a wider wave of screen adaptations of Liu Cixin's work, alongside The Wandering Earth films, the Three-Body television series, and projects such as Dream of the Sea and The Three-Body Problem II: The Dark Forest. Among the in-development adaptations tracked by Chinese entertainment coverage in 2026, Ball Lightning was described as the one held back longest, with nearly four years elapsed between wrap and a still-unannounced air date, though it had cleared censorship and was awaiting a slot on iQIYI.¹⁰ A separate film adaptation of the novel has also been reported, including a proposed China-Russia co-production, while the novel itself was called by Liu Cixin one of his works best suited to film adaptation.¹¹^•¹²

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026