3 Body Problem's Turbulent Road To The Screen Included A High-Profile Murder Case

Netflix's upcoming series "3 Body Problem" is bound to be a bloody affair with "Game of Thrones" showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss (along with Alexander Woo) at the helm. A recent profile in The Hollywood Reporter highlighted several details about the show's turbulent road from book to screen, which included the murder of billionaire Lin Qi, whose company owned the rights to the story. The show is based on a series of sci-fi novels by Chinese writer Liu Cixin known as "Remembrance of Earth's Past." The series gained popularity with English-speaking readers following Ken Liu's 2014 translation of the first book, "The Three-Body Problem."  

Lin Qi was the founder of the gaming company Yoozoo, which holds the rights to the "Three-Body Problem" IP. In 2020, news broke that the Chinese business mogul had been murdered via poisoning, with the prime suspect being the head of Yoozoo's film division, a man named Xu Yao. Speculation about the alleged murder ran rampant, with Chinese outlet Caixin Global even implying that the poisoning may have been influenced by the suspect's apparent obsession with "Breaking Bad." Anonymous sources apparently also told Caixin Global that Xu was involved with various rights issues for "The Three-Body Problem" adaptations (there was also a 2023 Chinese TV adaptation titled "Three-Body"), but that he had been taken off the project by Lin. 

The Hollywood Reporter's anonymous sources claim that Lin ruffled feathers among his team in 2018 due to a disastrous meeting between Yoozoo and Amazon Studios, who were at the time also trying to get the rights to a "Three-Body Problem" adaptation. One source claimed that Xu was particularly upset after the meeting, and they went on to say that they weren't surprised when they learned of Lin's murder. 

The death of someone so closely connected to the project was certainly a shock. Co-showrunner David Benioff told The Hollywood Reporter that the event was disconcerting, adding, "When you work in this business, you're expecting all sorts of issues to arise. Somebody poisoning the boss is not generally one of them." The surprise led Benioff to email a report of the murder to "Breaking Bad" creator Vince Gilligan along with the not-so-subtle message, "What have you done?"

Despite the rocky past production history, the murder of Lin Qi doesn't seem to have derailed Netflix's blockbuster production. On the contrary, the official trailer reveals a glimpse into a show that appears to have its ducks in a row. There are countless call-outs to the first book, along with plenty of hints at certain creative adjustments. As with most sci-fi book-to-screen adaptations, these are fairly inevitable, and with "3 Body Problem," they are absolutely essential. The books deal with complex scientific theories, immersive in-world gaming experiences, alien encounters, matter anti-matter weapons, fourth-dimensional experiences, and many other complicated concepts.

Fortunately, the story's author is okay with major adaptive changes. Per The Hollywood Reporter, Liu Cixin is also a big fan of "Game of Thrones," which he expressed to the showrunners when they chatted over Zoom early in production. In the words of co-showrunner Alexander Woo, Cixin went so far as to say, "'I know you're going to have to make a lot of changes.' We had Liu's blessing to adapt the show in the way that we saw fit." 

Here's hoping adaptive changes are the biggest drama ahead as the show moves past real-life murders and enters the dark days of humanity's in-story future when Season 1 kicks off on March 21.