NEWSNetflix Producer & Video Game CEO Lin Qi Dies After Allegedly Poisoned By Coworker
Lin Qi, who is the CEO of Chinese game development company Yoozoo and an executive producer for Netflix, is dead at the age of 39 — and officials think that his death is the result of being poisoned by a colleague.
News of Qi's death hit around Christmas, when his Shanghai-based gaming company confirmed his death in a statement December 25, saying it was made aware of the passing from his family.
Just a couple of days earlier, Shanghai police noted that they'd detained a suspect accused of allegedly poisoning him. The suspect’s full name has not released, but Yoozoo for its part has said the man's surname is Xu, and that he allegedly works for the company's film and TV branch.
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According to The Hollywood Reporter, officials released a statement describing Lin's hospitalization and treatment, which began on December 17. "During the patient's treatment, the hospital said it had determined that the patient had been poisoned. Following the call, the police began an investigation. According to investigations on site and further interviews, the police found that a suspect surnamed Xu, who is a coworker of the victim Lin, was the most likely the perpetrator. The suspect Xu has been arrested and investigations continue," they said.
Apparently according to reports, a dispute raging in the executive ranks of the company resulted in Xu utilizing a cup of tea to poison Lin.
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Yoozoo, which Lin founded in 2009, is the developer of video game Game of Thrones: Winter Is Coming. Lin additionally was an executive producer for the upcoming Netflix adaptation of the acclaimed Chinese sci-fi trilogy, The Three-Body Problem — the movie rights of which were initially acquired by Yoozoo's film division in 2014.
After various difficulties in executing a Chinese-language screen version of the internationally best-selling series, resulting in a series of delays, Netflix acquired the rights and brought on Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss to tackle an English-language adaptation of the bestselling Chinese sci-fi books. There's no word yet on how the scandalous murder investigation will affect the project at hand.
