Netflix’s 3 Physique Downside Had a Stunning True Crime Saga Happening Behind the Scenes

3 Body Problem has been a rankings hit for Netflix—based on the streamer, it racked up 11 million views in its first four days—and followers are ready to listen to if all those tantalizing questions it left unanswered will probably be addressed in a second season. However even with all its twists and that one really brutal sequence, there’s a behind-the-scenes drama as surprising as something contained throughout the collection.

As reported within the New York Times, the saga has greater than sufficient parts to fill a Netflix true-crime documentary collection. In 2020, Lin Qi—the 39-year-old billionaire behind gaming firm Yoozoo who’d optioned the movie rights to Liu Cixin’s acclaimed The Three-Physique Downside—was murdered by a former government at his firm, Xu Yao. Xu was not too long ago sentenced to demise by a courtroom in Shanghai for the crime. The paper quotes a Chinese language information outlet as calling the case “as weird as a Hollywood blockbuster,” and notes that whereas sure particulars haven’t been made public, this “story of lethal company ambition and rivalry with a macabre edge” noticed Xu—a lawyer who’d been at Yoozoo since 2017 and labored within the division particularly overseeing the Three-Physique Downside rights—change into enraged at work after a demotion.

That’s why he turned to the darkish internet and arrange a lab (drawing inspiration, apparently, from a favourite TV present: Breaking Dangerous), testing poisons on canine, cats, and different animals earlier than turning to human targets. The Occasions cites China’s Caixin as reporting “between September and December 2020, Mr. Xu started spiking drinks corresponding to espresso, whiskey, and ingesting water with methylmercury chloride and bringing them into the workplace.” After he was arrested, “Mr. Xu reportedly declined to admit to the crime and didn’t disclose what poison he had used, complicating medical doctors’ efforts to save lots of Mr. Lin’s life.” 4 different co-workers have been allegedly additionally on his checklist; the Occasions notes “he not solely killed Mr. Lin, but in addition poisoned his personal substitute.”

Although the Occasions was unable to get a Netflix quote for its story, the paper did level to a latest Hollywood Reporter interview with 3 Physique Downside co-creator David Benioff—whose Recreation of Thrones HBO collection served as the idea for Yoozoo’s technique recreation Recreation of Thrones: Winter Is Coming—by which he was requested in regards to the case. “Whenever you work on this enterprise, you’re anticipating all types of points to come up,” he stated. “Someone poisoning the boss will not be usually certainly one of them.” THR’s piece goes on to notice that earlier than Netflix took it on, The Three-Physique Downside was within the works at Amazon Studios in 2018, a deal that was scuttled partly as a result of “[Lin] was so obnoxious,” based on an nameless insider that spoke to the commerce. In addition they shared this chilling recollection: the Yoozoo group, which included Xu, “went out of the room [after the deal failed] and it was very dramatic. You would inform there was all this rigidity between them … [when Lin was murdered in 2020], I wasn’t stunned.”

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