Jonathan Nolan to adapt Asimov's FOUNDATION for HBO

[Werthead]

Boom.

Prediction: it will have more sex in it than the books. And probably won't span the 500 years the novels do. And probably will have more three-dimensional, interesting female characters. And male characters for that matter. And it won't spend quite so many pages dwelling on the genitalia of hermaphrodites.

I suspect it won't have much to do with the books at all, actually, apart from Hari Seldon and maybe a few plot points. It'll also certainly be better than the version planned by (shudder) Roland Emmerich before HBO swooped in and grabbed the rights.

[Calibandar]

Yes please. My sole concern is that it might stall and not get made.

[trickster]

I hope they completely ignore any material from the later books. The original trilogy is fine. I am cautiously optimistic.

[Crazydog7]

I'm not getting my hopes up they have dangled this carrot in front of my face before. It would be fantastic if it worked out but it wouldn't surprise me if it did not.

[CyanidePie]

There will be titties and a gay character.

[Teng Ai Hui]

I sense that the show will have Hari Seldon, psychohistory, and most likely the Mule, but the rest of it will look nothing like the books.

ETA: Now that I think about it more, I am also worried that Prelude to Foundation will be the basis for season 1 and not Foundation.

[Werthead]

The original books had boobs (including the main character declaring "Magnificent!" at a female character disrobing in Foundation's Edge, which is what probably won it the Hugo) and IIRC I think gay characters as well, although only in the later 1980s novels. The 1940s/50s ones barely acknowledged that even women existed.

[Hello World]

Ah, finally, the Foundation hate-thread I’ve been waiting for.

And it won't spend quite so many pages dwelling on the genitalia of hermaphrodites.

Too bad, I actually had high hopes until I saw this.

[Fez]

I can't remember, do the books start with the Foundation already established and the story of their creation being a later prequel or do they go in chronological order?

Either way, I imagine the series would start at the beginning of the timeline, and probably focus more on the fall of the empire than on the creation of the Foundation. That's more exciting story I think (and I can't remember at all what the second foundation was about).

[Shryke]

I wonder how you make a series out of this?

Anyway, the only really interesting part of the whole thing imo is the way the Mule disrupts the plan. Maybe you can build a story around that.

[Shryke]

I can't remember, do the books start with the Foundation already established and the story of their creation being a later prequel or do they go in chronological order?

Either way, I imagine the series would start at the beginning of the timeline, and probably focus more on the fall of the empire than on the creation of the Foundation. That's more exciting story I think (and I can't remember at all what the second foundation was about).

Yes. Kinda. The original story starts with Seldon basically tricking the government into setting up The Foundation under the guise of writing a new Encyclopedia Galactica or whatever. The stories then step forward many years at a time. There were three books, all published in the 50s, that collected all the stories.

The rest of the novels and such are prequels and sequels written in the 1980s.

[Jon AS]

I can't remember, do the books start with the Foundation already established and the story of their creation being a later prequel or do they go in chronological order?

They start with the Foundation being established as the Empire begins to crumble visibly. The later books are both prequels (telling of Hari Seldon coming to Trantor and first developing his theory, teaming up with Daneel in the process) and sequels (showing Daneel's backup plan).

The story told in the original Foundation stories spans many generations, I don't see that surviving the adaptation process.

[Hello World]

Yeah, I’m guessing that significant changes will be made, with the girl from the second half of Second Foundation playing a big role.

[felice]

The story told in the original Foundation stories spans many generations, I don't see that surviving the adaptation process.

You've got the Hari recordings to tie everything together, and maybe put a couple of robots on the Foundation to provide a constant presence through the generations.

[Starkess]

I remember these books being really boring and the format (the beginning novels were just short story collections) was very off-putting. I'm sure there's a good story in there somewhere, though, so I hope they find it!