\n<\/p>\n
Lin Qi was a billionaire with a dream. The video game tycoon had wanted to turn one of China\u2019s most famous science-fiction novels, \u201cThe Three-Body Problem,\u201d into a global hit. He had started working with Netflix and the creators of the HBO series \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d to bring the alien invasion saga to international audiences.<\/p>\n
But Mr. Lin did not live to see \u201c3 Body Problem<\/a>\u201d premiere on Netflix last month, drawing millions of viewers.<\/p>\n He was poisoned to death in Shanghai in 2020, at age 39, by a disgruntled colleague, in a killing that riveted<\/a> the country\u2019s tech and video-gaming circles where he had been a prominent rising star. That colleague, Xu Yao, a 43-year-old former executive in Mr. Lin\u2019s company, was last month sentenced to death for murder by a court in Shanghai, which called his actions \u201cextremely despicable.\u201d<\/p>\n The court has made few specific details public, but Mr. Lin\u2019s killing was, as a Chinese news outlet put it, \u201cas bizarre as a Hollywood blockbuster.\u201d Chinese media reports, citing sources in his company and court documents, have described a tale of deadly corporate ambition and rivalry with a macabre edge. Sidelined at work, Mr. Xu reportedly exacted vengeance with meticulous planning, including by testing poisons on small animals in a makeshift lab. (He not only killed Mr. Lin, but also poisoned his own replacement.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Lin had spent millions of dollars in 2014 buying up copyrights and licenses connected to the original Chinese science-fiction book, \u201cThe Three-Body Problem,\u201d and two others in a trilogy written by the Chinese author Liu Cixin. \u201cThe Three-Body Problem\u201d tells the story of an engineer, called upon by the Chinese authorities to look into a spate of suicides by scientists, who discovers an extraterrestrial plot. Mr. Lin had wanted to build a franchise of global television shows and films akin to \u201cStar Wars\u201d and centered on the novels.<\/p>\n Mr. Lin would eventually link up with David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of the television series \u201cGame of Thrones,\u201d to work on the Netflix project. Mr. Lin\u2019s gaming company, Youzu Interactive, which goes by Yoozoo in English, is no stranger to the HBO hit; its best-known release is an online strategy game based on the show called \u201cGame of Thrones: Winter Is Coming.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Lin\u2019s fate would change when he hired Mr. Xu, a lawyer, in 2017 to head a subsidiary of Yoozoo called The Three-Body Universe that held the rights to Mr. Liu\u2019s novels. But not long afterward, Mr. Xu was demoted and his pay was cut, apparently because of poor performance. He became furious, according to the Chinese business magazine Caixin.<\/p>\n As Mr. Xu plotted his revenge, Caixin reported, he built a lab in an outlying district of Shanghai where he experimented with hundreds of poisons he bought off the dark web by testing them on dogs and cats and other pets. Caixin said Mr. Xu was both fascinated and inspired by the American hit TV series \u201cBreaking Bad,\u201d about a cancer-stricken chemistry teacher who teaches himself to make and sell methamphetamine, eventually becoming a drug lord.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Between September and December 2020, Mr. Xu began spiking beverages such as coffee, whiskey and drinking water with methylmercury chloride and bringing them into the office, Caixin reported, citing court documents. The report\u2019s details could not be independently confirmed.<\/p>\n Calls to Yoozoo and the Shanghai court went unanswered. Netflix did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe plot is as bizarre as a Hollywood blockbuster, and the technique is professional enough to be called the Chinese version of \u2018Breaking Bad,\u2019\u201d Phoenix News, a Chinese news outlet, said last month.<\/p>\n