Jonathan Nolan adapting Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION for HBO

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Wait, I have a VERY important question:

Is this an adaptation of the awesome galaxy-spanning original trilogy of books...or an adaptation of the prequels focusing on less-interesting things?
 
Providing this gets a huge budget I am very excited.
I'm one of the few that prefares the Robot series of books but Foundation is great too and would love to see it adapted well.
 
Is the 'less interesting trilogy' you're talking about the Robots/caves of steel trilogy? If so ouch. I like those. Maybe I do need to read the foundation series.
 
Admiral Woofington said:
Is the 'less interesting trilogy' you're talking about the Robots/caves of steel trilogy? If so ouch. I like those. Maybe I do need to read the foundation series.
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No, that's a different series. The Elijah Baley books (The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun, The Robots of Dawn) are fantastic. Also, probably easier to adapt.

The Foundation series has 2 prequels (Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation) and 2 sequels. I think most of us are hoping they start with the originals.
 
LCfiner said:
Interesting. I liked the books although the first three are - as even Asimov admitted - people standing around in a single room and talking a lot. I imagine they’ll shake things up a bit for TV.
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I recently finished reading the main trilogy, and I would definitely agree with that description. Asimov's writing style is basically to put a bunch of people together in a room and have them converse about something that just happened to them. Then he jumps ahead in time after some other major event has occurred, and the characters have another conversation to explain that event.

Basically it means there is absolutely no sense of immediacy to the scenes at all.

But, despite that, I thought the books were entertaining and there were quite a few cool ideas.

I think it would work really well as a TV series. The storytelling style in the books is so sparse that there's tons of room for expansion and stretching things out.
 
Sectorseven said:
John Galt doesn't like where he sees America headed so he starts snatching up all the best business people and makes his own country with them.
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No, it's really nothing like that. The story doesn't really involve Seldon once he sets up his Foundation planet. I would say it's more similar to Noah's Ark than Atlas Shrugged. And the message isn't about society being run poorly, more about the future society simply being too huge to run without predictive modelling (which is too late to implement when he discovers it).

And yeah the less-good (though not bad) prequels I mentioned are the Foundation prequels, not the Robot series. The Robot series is awesome.
 
SocksAndShoes said:
Awesome news. Now we just need someone to do a mini-series based on the Culture series by Iain M. Banks.
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Oh wow, can you imagine? That one would really have to be an anthology series though, with each season being a whole new story and cast (and time period!).

I'd also like a Commonwealth Duology series (Pandora's Star and Judas Unchained).
 
I hope they stick with the original trilogy. Foundation's Edge might not have been awful, but it leads to the execrable Foundation and Earth. I made the mistake of tracking that book down back when it was out of print and have regretted doing so ever since.
 
Why not just do Dune? More interesting story, characters and concepts and it fills the GoT gap perfectly (Royal Houses/families in space fighting for power).
 
I can't believe this is finally happening.

As a huge Asimov fan, I really really hope this end being great.

Will this cover the trilogy or what?
 
I love Foundation. Even the BBC radio show is great. But I'm hesitant on this.

Hope they find somebody great to play the Mule. And plus HBO brings a nice big space pew pew budget.
 
Fuck YA!!

Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow are three of my favorite Si-Fi characters.

Psychohistory all up in this mother fucker.
 
crying-man.gif


My current favorite director is making a tv series of my favorite Sci Fi series ever .....

Wait until the season with the mule...... it will be a classic series
 
I need to go back to reading the second book

I'm curious how this will work out with all the frequent time skips and changing characters
 
A series is the best way to adapt Foundation. I wonder if they'll do one season for each section of the book.
 
Zeus Molecules said:
crying-man.gif


My current favorite director is making a tv series of my favorite Sci Fi series ever .....

Wait until the season with the mule...... it will be a classic series
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I wonder which order they will make them in. Maybe they will go the Arrow route, with two parallel lines. Cutting between Seldon's time line and the "Present".

SPOILERS for all Asimov books.

Imagine if they did the whole stretch from Caves of Steel to Foundation and Earth.

Edit!:
And that is topped off by an End of Eternity mini-series.
!

A guy can dream.
 
I wonder how they will make it interesting enough for HBO. Foundation is awesome, but I could never see it as a TV series. Its a lot of plot and almost no action.
 
This is not going to work, not by a long shot.
 
I'M BOARDING THE HYPE TRAIN, AND YA'LL AIN'T STOPPING IT.

No, seriously. It could work, as a TV series. 60-min for every story break, and ta-dah, it's done. If it ends up being just on Hari Seldon, eg. the prequels, i'll be sorely disappointed.

Vigilant Walrus said:
I've never read anything about Issac Isimov.. is he good??
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Is this serious? Go read Foundation, or Robots, or I, Robot, or Bicentennial Man, or End of Eternity, or just start here with The Last Question:
http://www.multivax.com/last_question.html
 
Xe4 said:
I wonder how they will make it interesting enough for HBO. Foundation is awesome, but I could never see it as a TV series. Its a lot of plot and almost no action.
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They will add a lot of sex scenes.
I haven't read the books so I don't really know
 
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