HBO is developing Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels as a TV series, with Dark Knight screenwriter Jonathan Nolan doing the adaptation. Nolan is currently in production on a remake of Michael Crichton’s Westworld for the cable network, but he has been working on the Asimov adaptation as well. He recently told Indiewire just how much he liked the Foundation Trilogy. “Well, I f*cking love the Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov—they’re certainly not unknown, but that’s a set of books I think everyone would benefit from reading. That’s a set of books where the influence they have is just f*cking massive; they have many imitators and many have been inspired by them, but go back and read those, and there are some ideas in those that’ll set your fucking hair on fire.”
Tor.com points out that Nolan is probably attracted to the Foundation books because one of Asimov’s elements is the idea of psychohistory, which “uses algorithms and societal indicators to predict the future of civilizations … The notion of algorithms predicting the future is not unlike the premise of Nolan’s TV series Person of Interest, so it’s no surprise that he was drawn to the project. The Foundation books will also find a good home in television (as opposed to film), because they’re a series of linked stories that jump around in decades and centuries, creating a huge cast of characters.”
