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.

Comments

Difficult to compress centuries to hours

[smooth wombat]

Many top sci-fi writers have done scripts and found it daunting to constrict the sprawling saga to a feature film format.

I finished reading the trilogy a week or so ago. There is no feasible way to take what was five hundred or so years of conflict and intrigue, and all the attendant characters, and make it into a two-hour movie. Nor even a three-hour movie.

Whatever would come out would be a shell of the story, the characters lifeless, and the plot unable to be followed by the majority of viewers. A tv show is the only way to approach Asimov's story since it allows for longer development of plot lines and encompass the time involved.

Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours

[Bradmont]

> Whatever would come out would be a shell of the story, the characters lifeless, and the plot unable to be followed by the majority of viewers. A tv show is the only way to approach Asimov's story since it allows for longer development of plot lines and encompass the time involved. Honestly, the characters were already lifeless. I have read and loved a lot of Asimov's writing, but characters were never his forte, and the characters in Foundation are downright flat.

Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours

[Sumus Semper Una]

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.

Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours

[nospam007]

" A tv show is the only way to approach Asimov's story"

Indeed. And every year will finish with the line:
"It doesn't matter, because I know, where the Second Foundation REALLY is!"

Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours

[EndlessNameless]

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.

Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours

[lkcl]

I finished reading the trilogy a week or so ago. There is no feasible way to take what was five hundred or so years of conflict and intrigue, and all the attendant characters, and make it into a two-hour movie. Nor even a three-hour movie.

now that you've read those, can i also recommend the books that were written by authors under the direction of the Asimov Estate? Roger Allen McBride, and Greg Bear. "I, Caliban" and "Foundation and Chaos". also, can i recommend "The End of Eternity", you will see why when you read them. also, "The Robots of Dawn" (paying special attention to Giskard - http://asimov.wikia.com/wiki/R... - who later featured indirectly in "Robots and Empire")

the primary reason is this: i see it again and again, stupid stupid politicians and even high-profile people like elon musk being total idiots, recommending that the "Three Laws be put into Law" or "Sent Into Space". anyone who TRULY UNDERSTANDS the Three Laws knows that they are DEEPLY FLAWED.

Asimov spent a LIFETIME EXPLAINING WHY.

it boils down to the fact that the robots were incapable - literally - of permitting humans to take risk. they had no imagination and no free will (a facet explored in the "I, Caliban" series with the "New Law" robots, which *did* have some modicum of free will).

Giskard was the first Robot with a Zeroth Law, "Thou shalt not allow HUMANITY through action or inaction to come to harm". He "imprinted" that - and his telepathic ability - onto R Daneel, who over the next thirty THOUSAND years became the hidden background character that (as described in "The End of Eternity") caused Earth to become mildy radioactive, forcing humans into space, where, unfortunately, due to the Robots, they populated 50 worlds.... and stopped.

The Foundation Series then jumps forward thirty thousand years, to cover an epic fight for human survival, where it is only AFTER Asimov died and other authors were permitted to "fill in the gaps" (Foundation and Chaos by Greg Bear) do we find out what was really going on.

So, when you say "would not fit into a four hour film".... I would be genuinely extremely surprised if the full depth and breadth of Asimov's work would be able to fit into anything less than a 200-series show of an hour each.

I am.. blown away that people believe that the three laws are a good idea. completely astounded.

Re:Difficult to compress centuries to hours

[AmiMoJo]

The robots where usually the best characters.

the psycho-historian doesn't 'read the future'

[fredrated]

he develops the mathematics to predict the future based on large-scale statistical analysis.

Re:the psycho-historian doesn't 'read the future'

[lkcl]

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.

Sci-Fi Resurgence?

[mentil]

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.

Re:Sci-Fi Resurgence?

[TheZeitgeist]

I suspect there is something to having good analytics about what people - as in the vast majority of people living beyond pop-culture's limited horizon - actually watch. Nielsen ratings are as antiquated as NTSC, and everyone knew it but nobody had different datasets to compare. With Netflix et al, now they do.

And there is precedent for this in movies - which bank on books almost by default. Outside of Star Trek, Star Wars, and Pixar, every big franchise started with a book. And its been that way ever since Popcorn Movie era began with Jaws (not ironically originally a book).

There's been exceptions like Indiana Jones and The Matrix, but overwhelmingly Hollywood depends on books to not only get plots, but gauge popularity (and longevity) of a given book to ascertain market for making movies and TV based on it.

Re:It's Apple

[Joce640k]

This will only inconvenience their paying customers, not the pirates.

(as with all DRM)

Merits of the Three Laws of Robotics

[steveha]

I am.. blown away that people believe that the three laws are a good idea. completely astounded.

I think you are overstating things a bit here.

The Three Laws are a convenient shorthand for saying "a comprehensive set of safeguards governing the operation of a robot." In the web comic Freefall people simply talk of "safeguards" rather than some arbitrary three laws.

The Three Laws have a huge place in the history of SF because they represent a sea change in how robots were presented. According to Asimov himself, in forwards to collections of his robot stories, before Asimov formulated the Three Laws robots were presented as dangerous things that generally went out of control to drive a story. He reasoned that people try to make things safe, and robots would be no different; people would incorporate safeguards, and his Three Laws were his take on a minimal set of safeguards.

Asimov then spent the rest of his career gleefully finding corner cases where the Three Laws were inadequate, and writing stories about what happens when those corner cases are hit. He was the first to promulgate the Three Laws idea and also the first to poke holes in them.

If someone really is arguing that the Three Laws are perfect and ready to implement, that shows they haven't researched the subject well and you are justified in being scornful of their shallow grasp of the subject. But if someone is talking informally and saying something like "robots should be required to have safeguards like the Three Laws" I have no problem with that, even if they phrase it less carefully and say something like "the Three Laws should be mandatory."

Also, when Asimov first wrote these stories, he overlooked two things that I consider hugely important. First of all, griefers. In his stories, any human could give an order to a robot and the robot would obey as long as no human was harmed. So a griefer could order an expensive robot to go smash a bunch of parked cars, ruining the cars and the robot, and (Asimov used this in his stories) the griefer could tell the robot "if you reveal my identity, I will come to harm" and it would be impossible for the robot to name the griefer. (It would also be possible to order "smash all these cars, and then forget ever having seen or talked to me.") The other thing is that Asimov imagined that it would be extremely difficult to make robot brains that did not include the Three Laws, which seems quaintly naive to me. If there is still a North Korea when robot brains are invented, there will be a secret project to make robots capable of serving as loyal soldiers, which means robots that obey Dear Leader's orders without question (no other safeguards included). As Jerry Pournelle used to say: "What man has done, man may aspire to do."[1] The existence of robot brains will be proof that a new robot brain design is possible.

P.S. Another classic of the robot genre is "With Folded Hands". Robots have the prime directive: to serve, and obey, and guard men[1] from harm. The robots ultimately enslave all of humanity in a smothering protective embrace: anything a human might want to do, like rock climbing, could be forbidden as too risky. Any human who resists this benevolent enslavement is lobotomized so that he/she will stop resisting and just enjoy life. I think in later stories the robots supervised even sex, on the theory that you could have a heart attack or something from the exertion, so the robots only allowed sex by young people, and only so there would be another generation of humans to serve.

Finally, for a modern take on artificial intelligence with inadequate safeguards, read the Torchship trilogy by Karl Gallagher. In these books, about a dozen whole planets (including Earth) have no living humans anymore because AI-controlled machines killed them all. In the stories, the historical events where the AIs went berserk are referred to as "The Betrayal".

The first book in the To