Not whether they will try: there’s every indication that they’re at least thinking about bring Foundation to TV. Whether it’s possible. Which is to say, whether you can create a Foundation on the small screen that matches the one in the books.
Skydance Trying Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ As TV Series; David Goyer, Josh Friedman To Adapt https://t.co/ww0xmMkhGP via @deadline @ogiel23
— Daniel Wallace (@danny72170) June 27, 2017
My immediate gut reaction to this is… you couldn’t put this on network television, because the nature of the basic trilogy prevents having one starring role (and no recurring roles — save Hari Seldon’s, of course). Never mind Deadline’s opinion that people would accuse Foundation of ripping off Star Wars; the real problem here is that the trilogy in question spans several hundred years and explicitly argues that the Great Man theory of history is fatally flawed. Whether or not you agree with that historical argument yourself, the fact of it is that network television do love their Great Men and Women. Or, if you prefer: “stars.”
But Amazon could pull it off. Or Netflix. Or Hulu. Or any of the other subscription TV services. They’ll just release each season at once and not worry about building another must-see TV franchise.
The first novel is an collection of short stories that doesn’t necessary lent itself to adaptation. The 2nd and 3rd novel does.
Personally I’m baffled why his Robot crime novels haven’t been adapted.
You could possibly do a series around Seldon, based loosely on the stuff in Prelude to Foundation/Forward the Foundation. Although I don’t know how well the “surprise” at the end of Prelude would work if you hadn’t been reading classic SF for years.
And no, I, Robot isn’t what I mean. The Elijah Bailey novels.
It’s so far beyond possible as to not even be plausible.
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I freely admit that I’m very “meh” about Foundation. I found it ludicrous as a young teenager, and I’ve only become more convinced that people are not so easily led over the many years since. So I’ll use The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as illustration, instead.
TMiaHM cannot be successfully converted to a film medium because it’s almost entirely three people (and a virtually present AI) sitting in nondescript rooms and talking about what’s going on in the world around them.
The only way that generates drama on the big screen, is if one of them is a mole. It just doesn’t work for the medium.
Foundation is even worse. It’s a parade of forgettable characters meeting in nondescript rooms and talking about what’s going on around them, for centuries.
Cat’s answer….. Yes it can be adapted .. sorta ..
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The first problem is, as Moe notes, there’s no multi-season-spanning “starring role” .. but the ‘American Horror Story’ seasons seem fairly popular, and solve the same problem.
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For a ‘Foundation’ series, each season would be one time period in the books .. an old Hari Seldon sets up the Foundation in series 1, maybe with some flashbacks to how the science of psychohistory evolved, then the cliff-hanger is when he lets ’em in on the secret – “it’s a trap!” (Cat proposes casting Justin Bieber as Lord Dorwin…)
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Series 2 is the expansion by religiosity, Series 3 is the triumph of Hober Mallow .. and wouldn’t *that* just be a fascinating viewpoint?
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Anyway .. the larger problem, in this cat’s opinion, is most of the action takes place offscreen .. the characters react to it, but don’t *cause* it .. many of the “clashes” that would drive the drama are ‘courtroom’ ..
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I can’t come up with a *recent* series where the characters mostly engage in intellectual battles .. I suspect a cause-and-effect feedback loop in the dumbed-down-istan we currently have…
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Anyway .. I’m thinking it can be done .. but it’s a heavy lift.
Each series needs to introduce a set of characters, get the audience to care about them, explain the political stress points, then ..
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Mew
I just reread the Foundation Books recently (and read through the later books for the first time). One of my conclusions was that a universe of humans controlled by a secret mind control cabal is actually a pretty horrifying concept.