The rocambolesque story of the murder of Lin Qi, a video game magnate, has reached its final chapter. China executed Xu Yao last week for killing in 2020 his boss: the billionaire owner of the video game company Yoozoo, and founder of The Three Body Universe, the production company that holds the film adaptation rights to The Three-Body Problem, the most successful science fiction trilogy in the Asian giant.
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The executed man was sentenced in 2024, coinciding ―in an unlikely synchrony― with the worldwide Netflix premiere of the series based on the saga written by Liu Cixin. His name appeared among the executive producers of this fiction led by the creators of Game of Thrones.
A Shanghai court found it proven that Xu poisoned Lin Qi’s food items with toxins on December 14 and 15, 2020. Their ingestion caused his death 10 days later.
The ruling argued that the killer had a conflict with the victim “over company management matters,” of which he had been CEO, and that it was a premeditated act. He was also held responsible for poisoning four other employees, although without causing their deaths.
The events took place in December 2020, shortly after Yoozoo closed the adaptation deal for The Three-Body Problem with Netflix, the world’s leading online audiovisual content platform. Lin was then 39 years old.
Shortly before, the British newspaper Financial Times had reported that the tech giant Amazon was considering paying up to 1 billion dollars (860 million euros, at the current exchange rate) to turn the trilogy into a series for its platform. It was Netflix that managed to close a contract for an amount that has never been revealed, and placed David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, who had already led the adaptation of Game of Thrones, at the helm.
Before dying, Lin had entered the list of the richest people in China compiled by the specialized publication Hurun, with an estimated fortune of 6.8 billion yuan (about 869 million euros).
The execution, carried out on May 21, according to Chinese media, was confirmed on Tuesday by The Three Body Universe: “Justice has finally been served,” the company said in a statement. “We hold a deep memory of Mr. Lin Qi and express our sincerest condolences to his family […] As comrades who fought alongside him, all members of the company thank the justice delivered by the judicial system.” The text calls for continuing to create more Chinese science fiction works “capable of leading the sector, opening new eras, and radiating to the whole world.”
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The trilogy Remembrance of Earth’s Past (known by the title of the first volume, The Three-Body Problem, published in 2008) is one of the biggest recent phenomena in the genre in China and worldwide. Among its admirers are figures such as Barack Obama: “Wildly imaginative,” said the former U.S. president to the newspaper The New York Times—.
The work has sold more than 11 million copies worldwide (seven million in China) and has been translated into more than 30 languages. Its author, Liu Cixin, became in 2015 the first Asian to win the Hugo Award, considered the Nobel of science fiction, thanks to the English edition of the first novel. At that moment, the fame of the work skyrocketed.
The Three Bodies have become one of the most impactful Chinese cultural products in recent years. The first season of the Netflix version was aired in 2024, becoming one of the most watched fictions on the platform, although without reaching the extremes of enthusiasm that its creators sparked with Game of Thrones on HBO. The version was controversial, especially among Chinese fans, for taking too many liberties. The second batch of episodes is expected to air throughout this year.
The trilogy also has a Chinese adaptation, developed by the tech giant Tencent, and released in 2023 in the People’s Republic. The renowned director Zhang Yimou is preparing a new film version.
An investigation by the media The Wire China about the rights saga claimed that these had been progressively inflated since Liu Cixin sold them in 2010 for a small sum to some filmmakers. In 2018, the murdered Lin acquired the property, founded the production company The Three Body Universe to develop the exploitation, and put Xu Yao, now executed, in charge of the company. Local media cited in this investigation reported that the relationship between the two deteriorated at the same pace as the value of the intellectual property grew.
In an interview with EL PAÍS in 2023, Liu Cixin commented on the matter, although avoiding entering into details of figures: when the film adaptation rights were sold, it was “a minor matter,” because at that time it was “an unknown and unremarkable work.” Science fiction still had a marginal presence in China, and film adaptations had barely begun.
“When the adaptation rights were sold,” he added, “neither the publisher nor I took it too seriously. We did not foresee the subsequent development of science fiction in China to that extent, becoming such a huge industry.” “At that time,” he continued, “it was casually thought that we might make a few dollars, nothing more. However, in the more than 10 years since then, how much has the cost of adapting Chinese science fiction intellectual property increased? Journalists have told me it has multiplied by at least 300, and a multiplication by 300 in 10 years is already quite frightening.”
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