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Apple Is Developing a TV Show Based On Isaac Asimov's Foundation Series (deadline.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Deadline: In a competitive situation, Apple has nabbed a TV series adaptation of Foundation, the seminal Isaac Asimov science fiction novel trilogy. The project, from Skydance Television, has been put in development for straight-to-series consideration. Deadline revealed last June that Skydance had made a deal with the Asimov estate and that David S. Goyer and Josh Friedman were cracking the code on a sprawling series based on the books that informed Star Wars and many other sci-fi films and TV series. Goyer and Friedman will be executive producers and showrunners. Skydance's David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross also will executive produce.
Originally published as a short story series in Astounding Magazine in 1942, Asimov's Foundation is the complex saga of humans scattered on planets throughout the galaxy, all living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. The protagonist is a psycho-historian who has an ability to read the future and foresees the empire's imminent collapse. He sets out to save the knowledge of mankind from being wiped out. Even the Game of Thrones' creative team would marvel at the number of empires that rise and fall in Foundation. Asimov's trilogy has been tried numerous times as a feature film at Fox, Warner Bros (with Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, who greenlit The Lord of the Rings), and then at Sony with Independence Day director Roland Emmerich. Many top sci-fi writers have done scripts and found it daunting to constrict the sprawling saga to a feature film format. Most recently, HBO tried developing a series with Interstellar co-writer and Westworld exec producer Jonathan Nolan, but a script was never ordered.
Originally published as a short story series in Astounding Magazine in 1942, Asimov's Foundation is the complex saga of humans scattered on planets throughout the galaxy, all living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. The protagonist is a psycho-historian who has an ability to read the future and foresees the empire's imminent collapse. He sets out to save the knowledge of mankind from being wiped out. Even the Game of Thrones' creative team would marvel at the number of empires that rise and fall in Foundation. Asimov's trilogy has been tried numerous times as a feature film at Fox, Warner Bros (with Bob Shaye and Michael Lynne, who greenlit The Lord of the Rings), and then at Sony with Independence Day director Roland Emmerich. Many top sci-fi writers have done scripts and found it daunting to constrict the sprawling saga to a feature film format. Most recently, HBO tried developing a series with Interstellar co-writer and Westworld exec producer Jonathan Nolan, but a script was never ordered.
Having read the novels some years ago, the only part of it that seems like it would make much sense as a movie was the part where The Mule messes up psychohistory. And without all the backstory it just wouldn't be as strong a story.
All I can say is if they do make this into a series I hope they take their time casting The Mule. He was actually one of my favorite characters of the books for some reason I've never been able to identify.
This is why I liked the Altered Carbon series on Netflix better than most movie adaptations, in spite of some changes. The world and plot was slightly different than the novel, but it did the story justice in a way a 2-3 hour film could not.
A longer series could have avoided the heavy-handed exposition of the virtual/stack technology. And allow more time for the characters to shine, which is usually possible with the depth available from the novel.
With on-demand streaming becoming more popular, I hope to see more novels adapted in this fashion.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
Seems quite a few classic sci-fi novels are being picked up for streaming/TV series adaptations recently. Foundation, Consider Phlebas, Ringworld, The Three-Body Problem, Altered Carbon, The Expanse. And then there's Star Trek: Discovery and The Orville. Television sci-fi was dead just a few years ago, I wonder what happened all of the sudden? One could say 'Game of Thrones' led to a general resurgence of geek lit, but there's a suspicious dearth of recent fantasy novel adaptations; Shannara and Wheel of Time are the only ones I'm aware of. Maybe Black Mirror or rising interest in SpaceX are responsible.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
he develops the mathematics to predict the future based on large-scale statistical analysis.
that's not quite correct: the pioneer of psychohistory is R Giskard:
http://asimov.wikia.com/wiki/R...
Asimov's stories are *really* complicated and absolutely amazing, whilst at the same time being drier than frozen CO2 and consequently at times an awesome pain in the ass to read.