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HBO Developing Asimov's Foundation Series As TV Show
wired_parrot writes: Jonathan Nolan, writer of Interstellar and The Dark Knight, and producer of the TV show "Person of Interest," is teaming up with HBO to bring to screen a new series based on Isaac Asimov's Foundation series of books. This would be the first adaptation of the Hugo-award-winning series of novels to the screen.
Best. News. Ever.
That Al-Quaida gets its name from these books? Regardless, great stories and one of the best things Asimov ever wrote (a man who wrote faster than I can find time to read.)
I bet there will be a lot more nudity than I remember in the books.
More music, fewer hits
Make a Rendezvous With Rama movie, would ya?
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Since the book(s) have all the action in the background, and the big reveal in the post crisis recap, I am sure the movie will suck. The temptation to turn it into a special effects Michael Bay-like cinema enema will ruin the complex story line. But the CGI teams will win a shit-tonne of awards.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
when they're done with it.
The Mule might, but Hari Seldon, a TV show doesn't make.
If my wife hears about this, she's liable to want us to go out and get cable again.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
If my wife hears about this, she's liable to want us to go out and get cable again.
HBO is going to have a standalone service in the near future.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
I take it that you missed the previous news about HBO.
HBO will be selling you HBO GO by itself by the time this gets to air.
This is definitely news for nerds. I hope they don't butcher the story.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
For HBO to completely miss the point.
Don't bother. That's what BitTorrent is for.
Now I don't have to read the books.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The original trilogy was awesome, but later books were not the same caliber. But knowing how the entertainment industry works, they'll milk it for all its worth.
...Jonathan Nolan that will make this good. HBO is careful about choosing show runners for these projects, and I think they'll treat it with the proper gravitas. Even the changes in the Leftovers were fine.
Just when will they start? Asimov wrote the prequels later, and they were really tight stories about Hari Seldon and the formation of the Foundation. However, the Golan Trevize storyline was great too. The Mule was short, I don't think you could base a series on it.
Maybe they'll cross-cut timelines from before The Sack to the ultimate end of the story.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
to television more easily, including the the ones written by the Killer B's, IMHO.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
I remember space ships and personal shield belts but no sex. HBO has a lot of work to do
Not only that, but many HBO shows are available via Amazon VOD. It looks like it is one season behind (in the case of Game of Thrones, at least), but you could still catch up with the Foundation series without subscribing to HBO/Cable TV.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I'm going to keep a positive outlook towards this and hope it will be good. Damn, they could do it justice if done well... The cgi would just add flavor and spice to an already epic tale.
Up next? Ringworld? That would be incredible.
We play the game with the bravery of being out of range
Take the names of the characters, drop all the technobabble (the essence of the stories), add a starlet for romance, use an existing script for the plot, and bang! Hollywood SciFi disaster.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
I Robot, and Bicentennial man simply did not live up to the books.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
It's been years since I read the original books. (I should definitely go back and re-read them.) Wasn't each book/story set in a different time period? You had the introduction with Hari coming up with Psychohistory, then various stories involving the Foundation (actually First Foundation though we don't learn of the Second Foundation until later). Each story takes place years, if not decades later often with an entirely different cast of characters.
It will be interesting to see how they handle this. Will each book be a season? Will there be an all-new cast each season (or whenever they jump books)? Or will they condense the time period jumps and different characters into one long story involving the same characters?
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I got HBO..well..mainly because Verizon gave it to me for free for a few months, but after watching Newsroom, John Oliver, and some of the other original programming they've done (From the Earth to the Moon, Band of Brothers), I think they could nail this. I mean, all of the talk about doing World War Z properly would be to make it a miniseries on HBO. Sure a TV show might need to change a few things but there's lots of opportunity for background stories to make this into a multi-season show.
Still hoping someday to see a movie based on Arthur C Clarke's "Rendezvous with Rama" book/series. Wish a serious producer would develop it (yes I know of that IMDB entry that has been there for nearly a decade). It is one of the best works of one of the best SciFi writers. Are the rights to it too expensive? Is it too difficult to translate to the big screen? The set at least would be no more complicated and green screened than any other larger SciFi. I'm just surprised it hasn't been done yet on what seems an obvious choice instead of yet another rehash of a current scifi series.
The whole premise of the Foundation series is obsolete. The premise was that it was possible to predict the future to a moderate level of detail by calculation. Now that vast efforts have been expended in that direction by the weather and financial communities, we have a reasonably clear understanding of what can and cannot be accomplished in the prediction department. We know now that little changes grow into big ones (the "butterfly effect") rather than being filtered out. The future is driven by unpredictable noise.
As much as I loved the books, I can't help but wonder if people will be put off by the idea of a universe where the only sentient beings are humans, from earth.
By the way, Tyrion dies in the first episode of the next season.
And black, muslim and lesbian. That should about cover it.
Or, it could suck. It could suck like Skiffy's Earthsea miniseries. We'll have to see.
The potential is there. We have the technology to show pretty much everything that happened in the books, at a budget that a TV series could afford. Hell, Hari Seldon's future history handheld calculator is practically current technology.
What I'd like to see in the design is something mildly retro-futuristic. Not totally camp like Flash Gordon, but with visual cues from the 1950's view of the future.
I'm trying really hard not to be a raging fanatic about this. I read the trilogy back in the seventies and they were my favorite series for a long while. I always thought they'd make a good TV series. But to quell excitement, one only has to see how other novel properties have been developed for TV, and how much a crapshoot it would be that the series would (a) be watchable, and (b) be successful enough to continue for the entire run of the novels. I guess we'll see.
Another thing I wonder about -- where do they start? with Foundation? Alternates include Prelude to Foundation, or going back further, Pebble in the Sky, or even further, Caves of Steel. Personally I'd like them to start with Foundation and set their sites on doing the original three novels. If it's a howling success they could always decide to do more.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
While HBO is at it, they could make an adaptation of The Void Captain's Tale. If they want sex and suchlike, that is.
"TV Adaptations are the last refuge of the semi-literate." --Salvor Hardin
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
HBO: Highly Boob Oriented
For those who care: https://archive.org/details/Is...
Will be interesting to see if HBO does better than the BBC ;>
Foundation might have been ground breaking and original when it was written. But its best ideas have either been adapted by other science fiction (Look! A city-planet, just like Coruscant!) or rendered quaint by the progress of technology (A handheld calculator! How amazing!). HBO has had success adapting contemporary fantasy, they should try adapting some contemporary science fiction.
Just to clarify, he's talking about the *purchase each episode individually* scenario on Amazon. (IMHO, ridiculously expensive.)
It's not available on (free with Amazon Prime) Amazon Prime Video. That's only (some?) HBO shows several years old. That's not meaning to disparage it, it has a bunch of good shows (e.g. Rome, Sopranos, Six Feet Under, etc.) Just not currently airing shows.
...gives me a bad feeling about this.
"Based on the back cover."
[John]
Shit better not happen!
That the lead will be a woman. It's 2014, you can't have things like plain old men as the primary lead, they have to "shake things up". Now "Hari" will be a broad.
I suppose so. Although unless they make "Hari" Five or six *decades* younger than the character in "Foundation" I'm not sure why it matters.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
Asimov's own introduction to the books talks about how little action there is. I don't have it in front of me, but here's roughly what I remember reading: There had been a long gap between when he wrote the first book and when his publisher tried to get him to write more material. He needed a refresher, so he re-read the original stories. And as he read, he kept waiting for something to happen but nothing ever did!
Despite that, it was a compelling story and he obviously wrote a bunch more. But why would you make a TV show or movie out of it? There's almost nothing in it that's more compelling if you see it instead of reading it.
muslim and lesbian
Er...isn't that a stonable offense? Kind of mutually exclusive...
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There is ZERO evidence for ANY life in the universe other than that which has originated on Earth. ZIP. Zero.
There is conjecture, projection from imagined statistics (not even real statistics), and the famous "Drake equation" which is based upon nothing and generally populated by numeric parameters that are pure guesses not backed up by actual observation. Alien life is not, at this point in time, science.... barely even science fiction - it's PURE FANTASY with no more evidence than unicorns, the flying monkeys of the Wizard of Oz, and arguably FAR LESS evidence than the Loch Ness Monster, Yeti, and Chupcabra.
Sorry Star Wars and Start Trek fans, but your alien cantinas and alien armies are no more "scientific" than anything from the Princess Bride, the Smurfs, the flying spaghetti monster, or the pronouncements of a Mullah or the Pope (all of which you probably disdain). The lack of evidence does not prove any of these wrong, it just means the evidence is lacking that they are right... and that includes evidence for even microbial alien life.
Space aliens are an easy storytelling tool, but there has been LOTS of great sci fi that does not contain them, and they are not needed to make a great story.
Uh... no.
We'll either get cable or wait for the DVD, thanks.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
I was going to argue that the Amazon VOD isn't that expensive - at $1.99 per episode - but then I noticed that Game of Thrones is $2.99 per episode for SD and $3.99 per episode for HD. Buying the whole season (10 episodes) saves you a whopping $0.91. So it might be an option if you don't want to subscribe to HBO via a cable provider JUST for Foundation and if HBO's standalone service (when it comes) isn't priced at a less expensive rate.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Even at "just" $1.99/episode, I think that's ridiculously priced. Though I don't buy very many DVDs or BluRays, $20/season (for "typical" OTA shows that are 20+ episodes/season) is what I consider a good price.. obviously that's less than $1/episode, and that's with a hard copy (I think that's a _good_ thing).
I'm mostly thinking of it as if I were to buy every episode of what I watch - it would be WAY more expensive than cable.
Well, I hope they at least bothered to check if they could use the IP before pitching the show.
-Styopa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I...
Mostly random stuff.
I love the man's science books, but let's face it; his novels are on the dry, intellectual side. For sheer fun, you gotta go to Donald Kingsbury's Psychohistorical Crisis.
Mostly random stuff.
Well, that's stupid. Depriving yourself for nonsense moral reasons. Baaaa.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
I read the Dune books when I was a kid and loved them. I watched the Dune movie and regretted it. Damage being done, I watched the Dune 3 episode serial years later and that was bearable but I learnt not to watch movies based on books I loved. Their images will prevail on my imagined faces and worlds and this is not good. Furthermore they can hardly improve on something that I already considered very good.
That's why I didn't watch the Lord of the Rings, or The Hobbit, or Ender's Game and probably many other movies.
However I watched Bladerunner way before knowing it was taken from a book. I was too young to know about Philip Dick yet. Years later I read the book and was positively amazed about the duality between the book and the movie. Still don't know which one is better but they can coexist because of the differences. For sure the movie's images are stronger the the book's ones in my mind.
How is getting cable or buying the DVD depriving myself?
You could argue that choosing to not cheat is depriving myself too.... but that doesn't mean it actually is.
Do you even understand the point of ethical virtue?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
is a Canadian author, educator at New York University, and advocate of a "reformist" interpretation of Islam.
Well there you go. She's in Canada...I expect those conservatives in the Middle East would gladly kill her if they could get at her, just for the reformist bit. ...oh, and she's also lesbian.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
*in New York. Blah :P
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Bender: Look, I enjoy life and its pleasures as much as anyone here, except perhaps you, Hedonismbot. [Hedonismbot eats grapes in a very sloppy manner.] But we need to be shut off, especially you, Hedonismbot!
Hedonismbot: I apologise for nothing!
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Love this... except HBO is an horrible network. I'm still waiting to get my hands on GoT season 4 because they refuse to release it in the USA. Utterly deplorable that my cousin in London can buy it on Google Play and Amazon, but poor ol me has to wait almost an additional year. Bastards. No, I'm not buying an HBO subscription just because they occasionally release a good show like GoT or hopefully Foundation. It belongs on SyFy. Something so immersive as Foundation should be released in concert with a game, like Defiance... but better.
Interesting that you changed "waiting" to "buying".
A moral option might be to torrent the series as it airs but buy the DVD when released. Or it might not ;)
If I'm buying the DVD, obviously I am waiting... probably until the season is finished.
Another possibility might be to watch episodes as they are released on iTunes, if they publish via that route, although for an entire season of shows, it is typically less expensive to buy the DVD.
By choosing to wait instead of torrenting the episodes, I'm not depriving myself of anything that I would have had any legal entitlement to in the first place.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There is nothing ethical about abstaining from piracy.
You are depriving yourself from seeing a higher quality release, available now without DRM or commercials.
Obtaining the content in this way does not prevent you from supporting and/or purchasing the works in a format of your choosing at a later date.
If you ignore ACs because they are anonymous - you're an idiot.
I am not depriving myself of anything to which I would have had any legal entitlement to have in the first place.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
That Will Smith would make the best leading actor for this series!
Also make it gritty and dark, add boobs, some lesbian action, gratuitous violence, and.... robots I guess and you got a hit! But please for the love of god don't put Jaden Smith in it! :)