It was only a matter of time before someone actually made Foundation. We've come close a couple of times, with movie versions being threatened. I've always been worried about this, as Isaac Asimov's novels - especially the core trilogy - do not lend themselves to movies. They take place over the course of thousands of years, telling the slow story of humanity's future after the Galactic Empire falls into barbarism. It's possibly Asimov's masterwork, and it's one of my all-time favorite stories. And it would only work as a TV show.
That might be happening, as Jonathan Nolan - who wrote Interstellar, in theaters now - is developing a series based on it for HBO. The climate seems absolutely right, as we live in a time where smarter scifi travels to wider audiences and where season-long anthology shows have found acceptance. The nature of Foundation means that whoever stars in the first season would be gone by the second (except for whoever plays Hari Seldon, the man who founds the Foundation, and who keeps popping up in recorded messages). As a TV show Foundation could be a close-ended epic on par with Game of Thrones but with the sweep of centuries.
