The story of the famous Chinese science fiction novel “The Three-Body Problem” (2006) begins in a military camp in Mongolia during the Cultural Revolution in China. Over the course of the story, the lives of people from that tiny corner of the world and the choices they make become inextricably intertwined with alien invasions, inter-dimensional travel and the fate of galaxies.
This novel would soon become the nexus of a copyright struggle that spans decades and continents and would culminate in a Netflix adaptation and the deaths of two men — one by poisoning, another by state-sponsored execution.
When Liu Cixin published “The Three-Body Problem” in 2006, he had been working as an engineer at a power plant in Shanxi for over 20 years. He doesn’t have the crazy sideburns of Isaac Asimov or the sage-like look of Tolkien. He wears a buzz cut and rectangular glasses, holds an ordinary job and picks up his daughter from school every afternoon. Writing was more of a hobby to Liu. He’d even tilt his screen at an angle when he did it to hide it from coworkers.
Despite previous successes with shorter pieces, Liu’s “The Three-Body Problem” did not immediately enter the mainstream upon its release. In 2008, Liu published the second book of the trilogy, but still remained relatively unknown and faced imminent unemployment from the power plant. That’s when screenwriter Song Chun Yu and her husband, director Zhang Fan Fan, contacted Liu.
After meeting at the Beijing Film Academy during their undergraduate years, Song and Zhang collaborated on three unsuccessful horror films, with ratings ranging from 4/10 to 5/10 on Douban (China’s version of IMDb). But they were idealists waiting for something bigger, and in “The Three-Body Problem,” they found galaxies and universes.
After some conversations with Liu conveying their vision of a movie adaptation, they successfully bought the rights from him. When those rights transferred hands, however, “The Three-Body Problem” entered a series of tumultuous events that Liu could have never fathomed. In 2014, Song and Zhang held a press conference in Beijing with practically every media company executive in China to discuss the film adaptation of the sci-fi trilogy. There, they met Lin Qi, the billionaire owner of Chinese gaming company Yoozoo, who became entranced with Liu Cixin’s vision and wished to adapt the book for the big screen. The three would soon begin to collaborate on this project.
It didn’t take long before everyone on board realized this was a sinking ship. As studios would realize in the years to come, “The Three-Body Problem” is nearly impossible to adapt. The story itself was politically charged and faced censorship concerns, which, compounded with the abundance of special effects the film would require and Song and Zhang’s own limited experience as filmmakers, caused the project to stagnate year after year.
Meanwhile, the series was beginning to garner international attention. In 2015, it became the first Chinese novel to win the Hugo Award, the highest accolade in sci-fi writing. The series became a source of national pride and garnered fans around the world, including celebrities such as Barack Obama and Mark Zuckerberg. Consequently, its media adaptations also became a matter of international interest.
The pressure was on for the trio. By January 2018, the date by which Lin Qi was contractually obligated to release the film, it was clear that the project was nowhere near finished and investors were beginning to pursue legal action.
It was at this dire moment that Xu Yao, chief risk control officer of Yoozoo, entered the picture, and the fate of Lin Qi and “The Three-Body Problem” adaptation took a drastically different turn.
In terms of personalities, Xu and Lin were polar opposites. Lin was commanding and flamboyantly rich, while Xu was reserved and calculated. Xu used his negotiating skills to buy the adaptation rights from Song and Zhang for 120 million RMB and convinced them to leave the project. His partnership with Lin Qi cleared away years of chaos and saved the company. This, according to the Chinese media, was their “honeymoon phase.”
Instead, Lin Qi decided to pivot from creating the film himself to selling the project to a third party. A few months later, Lin created the “Three-Body Problem Universe Cultural Development Co., Ltd.,” a company whose sole purpose was to control and distribute the rights to an adaptation. Xu was appointed as CEO.
In June 2018, Yoozoo worked with Tencent, one of China’s biggest streaming platforms, to create a TV adaptation. The show started filming in July 2020 and was released in January 2023, receiving an 8.7/10 rating on Douban. Meanwhile, in September 2020, Netflix won a bidding war against Disney and Amazon and obtained the English adaptation rights. Everything seemed to be moving in the right direction for Yoozoo.
However, when the collaboration with Netflix was announced, Lin was credited as a producer, while Xu was not. Lin had more power than Xu, but Xu was the one who truly contacted collaborators and coordinated overseas communications. Xu was barred from giving interviews, and gradually, he was replaced in his role at the company by a new executive named Zhao Yilong.
In December 2020, Lin was mysteriously poisoned, and he died on Christmas Day. Zhao was also found to be poisoned but survived after intensive treatment.
Later reports revealed that Xu was to blame, as police investigations uncovered his bizarrely heinous plot. Inspired by the hit TV series “Breaking Bad” (2008–13), Xu set up a site in the suburbs of Shanghai as a testing lab for poison. He used 160 different phone numbers to buy his poison ingredients and preemptively hired a team of lawyers. To ensure the effects of the poison, he tested the poisons on cats, dogs and other animals. He considered a variety of means to deliver the poison. Eventually, he set his eyes on Lin’s probiotic medicine and replaced it with 30 pills of poison. During the autopsy, at least five different types of poison were detected within Lin’s bloodstream. Despite his team of lawyers and careful planning, Xu was later arrested for Lin’s poisoning on December 18, 2020.
The Netflix adaptation, “3 Body Problem,” premiered on Netflix on March 21, 2024, with 11 million views in its first four days of streaming, and remained Netflix’s most-watched program for weeks. A second season is already in the works. Just one day after the Netflix premiere, Xu was sentenced to death by the Shanghai First Intermediate People’s Court.
Meanwhile, not much has been heard from Song and Zhang, who first brought the idea of adapting “The Three-Body Problem” to the world. The last time Zhang updated his Weibo (the Chinese equivalent of X, formerly known as Twitter) was on June 17, 2016, saying “Rumors will die by themselves, we welcome you to fan the flames.”
Author Liu Cixin has yet to comment on the murder. He is now a full-time writer with dozens of books to his name that have redefined Chinese science fiction, but he has not played a major role in the recent adaptations of his works. Once, someone asked Liu if he regretted selling the copyrights to Song and Zhang, but he simply said “Since I made that decision back then, I must keep my promise.”
