The most serious problem with The 3-Body Problem: producer died of poisoning | Television

It’s perhaps the most serious problem surrounding the series The 3-Body Problemthe biggest hit of Netflix in recent weeks and currently the second most watched series on the service in Portugal: Lin Qi, the multimillionaire who helped produce the series, was poisoned in 2020 by Xu Yao, the lawyer who played an essential role in the business that led to the adaptation of the science fiction trilogy The Three-Body Problem by Netflix. Xu Yao was convicted last week of Lin’s murder, and was sentenced to death.

The series premiered on March 21st and after just four days of airing it had 11 million views of its eight episodes and was in the top 10 in 91 countries (the most recent data from the platform is up to March 24th). Adapted and created for television by the duo The Game of Thrones, David Benioff and DB Weiss, with Alexander Woo, the series has as executive producers both the author of the science fiction epic, Liu Cixin, and Lin Qi, posthumously, in a list that even includes Brad Pitt — but which does not contain the name by Xu Yao.

Lin Qi, founder ofThe Yoozoo Games, responsible for video games GTArcade, League of Angels or Infinity Kingdom, was a fan of The Three-Body Problem, by Liu Cixin. He imagined it as a great global saga made for the screen and in 2014 he acquired the rights to adapt the novel. Connecting with Benioff and Weiss, as well as Netflix, was the next step, as Yoozoo made a game based on The Game of Thrones.

In 2017, Lin Qi hired Xu Yao as risk manager for Yoozoo and to manage The Three-Body Universea subsidiary company of Yoozoo Games dedicated only to developing the rights to adapt the book. How do you remember now O New York Times in an article that explains “the bizarre murder intrigue behind The 3-Body Problem”, Xu Yao he considered himself essential to the business that brought the multimillionaire together with Netflix, but was demoted, apparently due to a lack of results in his tasks. The situation would have drastic developments.

Lin Qi began to feel unwell in December 2020, leading to his hospitalization on the 16th. A day later, Xu Yao was detained by the police. According to the court, not only did he not confess to the crime, he also did not reveal the poison used, which made the work of the clinical team assisting Lin Qi, who would die on the 25th, at the age of 39, difficult.

Four other people, including his replacement in the position at The Three-Body Universe, who, according to the Chinese economics magazine, Caixin This would have motivated Xu’s fury, and his wife also suffered the effects of what would later be discovered to be poisoning. Everyone survived.

One day after the series premieres in all countries where Netflix is ​​available — the service does not exist in China, but many viewed the series illicitly –​, Xu Yao was sentenced to death by a Shanghai court of first instance, which considered that there had been a conspiracy to poison Lin Qi, “premeditated” and “extremely despicable”, as cited by the BBC.

Despite the public interest that the case arouses, information has been scarce and it was only four years later that some details began to be known, both from the Chinese media, which cite company sources, and from the (little) information released by the court in recent days. . Xu Yao set up a company in Japan just to acquire dangerous substances, says the BBC, and then tested them on pets; will have done so with hundreds of substances acquired in the so-called darkweband when he found the cocktail Certainly he will have started administering it to Lin Qi.

He disguised it as probiotic pills that he provided to Lin, the BBC also says; put the poison, identified as methylmercury chloride, in coffee, water and whiskey, which he then took to the company’s facilities, cites the economics magazine Caixin by consulting court documents. The New York Times reports that Xu Yao idolized Walter White, Bryan Cranston’s character in Breaking Bad who goes from a chemistry teacher diagnosed with cancer to a methamphetamine manufacturer and dealer.

Neither Netflix nor Yoozoo have commented publicly on the case, but Benioff was confronted with the case and Lin Qi’s “certainly baffling” death by the magazine HollywoodReporter a few months ago. “When you work in this field, you expect all kinds of problems to arise. Someone who poisons the boss is not usually one of them.”