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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.
Good thing it's Asimov and not George R R Martin...
Hari Seldon would have been killed by a classmate before he ever developed psychohistory.
How will HBO put boobs in this? Will there be fembots in it? :-)
Make a Rendezvous With Rama movie, would ya?
...but it's being eaten...by some...Linux or something...
Now I don't have to read the books.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
It's not the translation of action that I am concerned about. It can be done. Books and movies have different strengths, and "action" is not the strong suit of books. HBO has done a good job. Personally, I think of Jackson's Lord of the Rings / Hobbit movies, where Jackson either extended or invented from scratch action scenes.
I am more concerned about scope. Each chapter in the Foundation saga is a vignette, a thin slice of time, separated by vast amounts of time. For each seasons they would almost have to fire the entire cast, strike all of the sets, etc. It would have the same problem as anthology shows like the Twilight Zone or Tales from the Crypt. There is a low correlation between a winning episode and a losing episode. Hit upon a great story line or a new great actor and you need to junk it for the next episode. The Twilight Zone was consistently good, but Tales from the Crypt was all over the place.
Foundation was not really prudish, but Asimov really didn't include (any that I recall) blatant sex scenes or sexual themes in his books, at least directly. It was always between the lines, as a means to advance the plot. Similarly the language was pretty clean most of the time. I'm not sure how this fits HBO's M.O. I mean they added MORE sex to Game of Thrones, and the books I think covered almost every variety and perversion attainable without giving characters internet access.
Foundation to me was always more Star Trek style science fiction, geared towards dreamers and full of hope (even in spite of what psychohistory predicted, and why Foundation existed). In contrast, HBOs other series, though well done, tend to focus on our seedier side. HBO can make a good show, but I wonder if the end product will resemble the series it's based on. Sex won't ruin it, but done the way HBO does it, will certainly be distracting.
Well, at least we got to learn that Minister Lizalor's breasts were as massive, firm, and overpoweringly impressive as the Minister herself. ;-)
Ezekiel 23:20
Most movies and TV shows take place in a universe where the only sentient beings are humans from Earth.
Quite a few seem to be based in a universe where there aren't any sentient beings at all. We call them "reality TV".
That Al-Quaida gets its name from these books?
Yes. As a Russian American Jew, Asimov represented everything that Bin Laden loved.