There have been numerous articles about the making of 3 Body Problem, Netflix’s ambitious and unwieldy adaptation of Cixin Liu’s acclaimed novel, but there’s one element we haven’t heard much about in the U.S. It involves an executive producer of the series, a lawyer, and an elaborate murder plan.
On March 22, the day after 3 Body Problem was released on Netflix, a Chinese court was handing Xu Yao a death sentence for the murder of executive producer Lin Qi. There’s been very little U.S. news coverage of the case, which is receiving more attention now thanks to X user Rui Ma, who shared the story in a short thread:
Lin Qi was an entrepreneur who founded Yoozoo, the successful Chinese gaming company behind the RPG Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming, in 2009. Lin, whose net worth was reportedly around $1 billion, purchased the rights to Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem with plans to turn the novel into a hit franchise, and hired lawyer Xu Yao to negotiate the deal with Netflix. We all know how that part went—Netflix made a deal with Lin in 2020 and spent a reported $160 million on the first season of the series, with Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss serving as co-showrunners alongside Alexander Woo.
Netflix announced the series in September 2020. Three months later, on Christmas Day, Lin died in a Chinese hospital at the age of 39, the result of a suspected poisoning. According to The Daily Mail, Lin was hospitalized for nine days and received numerous blood transfusions before he died. Xu was identified as the prime suspect and detained by Shanghai police, who determined that the lawyer was responsible for poisoning Lin and two other colleagues he had disputes with.
Per Rui Ma’s breakdown of the case, Xu was upset with Lin for cutting his salary due to poor performance and, inspired by Breaking Bad, hatched an elaborate poisoning scheme:
Driven by revenge and inspired by the TV show “Breaking Bad,” Xu meticulously planned Lin’s murder. He purchased 160 phones and established a company in Japan to acquire the necessary chemicals for his scheme, testing them on animals. Xu then poisoned Lin and his colleagues, disguising the lethal substances as an advanced probiotic. Lin unsuspectingly consumed it and soon after was hospitalized, where it was immediately apparent he had been poisoned, though the specific toxins were unknown. The police quickly suspected Xu, who, had he disclosed the nature of the poisons (later found to have included exotic substances such as pufferfish poison and mercury and at least three other poisons), could have saved Lin’s life. However, he chose not to, ensuring Lin’s demise
On March 22, Xu was sentenced to death by the Shanghai First Intermediate People’s Court.
In a follow-up post, Rui Ma shared a translation of a Chinese article about the case, which revealed that Xu attempted to mount the equivalent of an insanity plea: “Xu Yao not only hired a team of lawyers for a not-guilty defense but also prepared extensively for a psychiatric evaluation to use this status to avoid legal punishment It is known that Xu Yao previously purchased a large number of books to understand how to undergo psychiatric evaluations and searched online for papers and materials, inquiring into domestic and foreign cases where punishment was avoided due to psychiatric evaluation.”
Lin Qi had ambitious plans for 3 Body Problem. Chen Long, one of his former professors, shared a remembrance of Lin in which he revealed that the entrepreneur spent $150 million on rights and licenses related to Cixin Liu’s novel. “His mission was to make the trilogy’s world into an internationally recognized franchise, with movies, television shows, video games, anime and more.”
(featured image: Netflix)
