Lin Qi, executive producer of “Game Of Thrones” creators’ new Netflix series, is dead at 39 after allegedly being poisoned. Qi was the chairman and chief executive officer of Chinese entertainment company Yoozoo Group.
Yoozoo Group confirmed the news surrounding Qi’s death on Christmas Day after the business tycoon was hospitalized a week earlier. Police are investigating his death in Shanghai and have caught a suspect, Xu Yao. According to Chinese media outlets, Yao was one of Qi’s colleagues at Yoozoo Group. There are rumors that Lin was poisoned through a pu-erh tea which Xu Yao contaminated, although this information has not been confirmed yet.
Founded in 2009 by Lin Qi himself, Yoozoo was the catalyst for the successful transition from producing online to mobile games in China. The company released a statement following his death: “The board of directors gives its highest respects to the chairman for his contributions to the firm.” They also stated that executives and employees feel “deep grief and mourning, and send their sincere condolences to the family.”
His death comes at an untimely period, as he was set to be an executive producer for the upcoming Netflix series “The Three-Body Problem,” which was being adapted for television by “Game Of Thrones” showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss. The series is based on a sci-fi trilogy novel written by Chinese author Liu Cixin and explores humanity’s first contact with alien creatures.
There was controversy earlier in the year surrounding the upcoming series regarding the author’s political views. It was discovered that Liu appeared to be in support of the Chinese government’s policy of mass imprisonment and persecution of Uyghur Muslims. This led to five United States senators sending a letter to Netflix, in which they criticized the streaming platform for associating themselves with the author.
Netflix released a statement regarding this whole controversy, saying “Mr. Liu is a Chinese citizen living in China – he is the author of the books, not the creator of this Netflix series. We do not agree with his comments, which are entirely unrelated to his book or this Netflix show.”
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