Sony Pictures Has bought "Foundation"

[DrCorby]

I can think of lots of classic sf novels that seem better suited to film. CHILDHOOD'S END, MORE THAN HUMAN, THE DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS (again), HAVE SPACESUIT WILL TRAVEL, THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS, DANCERS AT THE END OF TIME, LEST DARKNESS FALLS, THE CHRYSALIDS, GATHER DARKNESS, maybe something by Poul Anderson or William Gibson . . . .

I'm surprised that Niven's Ringworld isn't on the short list of big sf movies that someone wants to make. Epic scale, great potential visuals, CGI for the aliens, a little sex... all things Hollywood usually loves to do! The sequel novels drag in a lot more of the Known Space background that would take some explanation in follow-up movies. But probably doable, if the first movie goes over well.

Also, for a little military SF, something set in Gordon R Dickson's Dorsai universe might do well at the box office.

ETA: Greg just beat me to mentioning the Dorsai universe. And Witch World would also be great!

 

[Greg Cox]

Mike Resnick's SANTIAGO was optioned ages ago. Whatever happened with that?

And what about Alfred Bester. THE STARS MY DESTINATION? THE DEMOLISHED MAN?

(I actually own an old paperback edition of THE DEMOLISHED MAN that says "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture" on the cover. This was back in the seventies or eighties.)

 

[CorporalCaptain]

With respect to the Ringworld series:

The first book, Ringworld, as the text goes, doesn't have a lot of action. It's more about special effects, as it were. The tension that erupts between the team follows from talk, talk, talk. Although it could probably be restructured in minor ways to milk for it for more action, there's also a risk that it would be boring to a lot of people. Appreciating the centerpiece of the book, the structure itself, and being impressed by the climax of how they get off the structure, requires one to be amazed by the gee-whiz-ness of it all.

The second book, The Ringworld Engineers, is actually my personal favorite. More action, more compelling character interactions, greater emotional impact, but again a lot of gee-whiz going on too.

Don't get me wrong, I dig it. I understand and appreciate the technical points, including the ecological allusions applicable to us. But I would expect that to be boring to a general audience.

After the first two, the series jumps the shark, IMO.

 

[arch101]

THe only way this works is to adapt the first 3 books into a minimum 2 year cable series. It's too big a story for a movie or even a mini.
I wonder if a modern filmmaker will show the liberal smoking of cigars featured in the novels?
It'll be VERY entertaining to listen to all the younglings on here complain about all the stuff Foundation "steals" from Star Wars
If they make it, I'll watch.

 

[Set Harth]

It'll be VERY entertaining to listen to all the younglings on here complain about all the stuff Foundation "steals" from Star Wars

For example, the planetwide city, characters named "Han" and "Bail", and constant Jedi mind tricks...

 

[Guy Gardener]

Jimmy Smitts makes invisible characters even more invisbler.

As far as story formatting goes, what about the return to the serialized priming feature like they used to have in the 40s?

Imagine if each of the chapters in the three books was a 20 minute story played at the beginning of a movie, they could use to force punters to sit through something awful like Katherine Hiegl that's running short?

12 20 minute movies have to be easier to view/sell than a 4 hour movie...

You remember the stories about people who would pay fro a movie, watch the Phantom menace trailer, walk out and then repeat the process another 6 times before lunch.

 

[Klaus]

There were signs at my local theater when the IMAX Dark Knight trailer was attached to I Am Legend because people were doing just that -- it said after the trailer started there were no refunds.

 

[Kegg]

If we're just gonna shoot around stuff that should be a movie? Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl. Vivid depiction of a future Thailand and a world where the bottom fell out of the energy market and biotech has to overcompensate. You've got cool images (genetically modified transport elephants, dirigibles, a sea wall), some action sequences, an intriguing plot, strong characters, the works.

If we're talking about adapting a classic, and I can't demand a Philip K. Dick book (The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch...)... again, go get Stand on Zanzibar, for similar reasons as above. Admittedly, yes, two books I read this year, but also, they were very good.

CHILDHOOD'S END, MORE THAN HUMAN,

Childhood's End was my favourite sci-fi novel at fourteen. Pretty sure it'd still make the top ten. As far as the novel's transcendentalism and Big Future For Humanity goes, it's already been touched on in 2001 - and, obviously, the idea of aliens with mysterious intentions floating above Earth has been mined to death - but I'd definitely love a movie about that.

And More Than Human... would be a very different movie. People who aren't really people stuff. I could see it making a pretty solid movie or miniseries, though.

William Gibson . . . .

The director of Cube is making Neuromancer, so...

Moorcock's Champion Eternal stories,

That's less a series per se and more a way to self-referentially have most of his fiction be interconnected through various universes. I expect something like that would be closer to the Marvel superhero movies in terms of connectivity.

 

[Unimatrix Zero]

I agree with the comments regarding Foundation not being "small" enough for a blockbuster movie.

Perhaps if the film does get made, it may lead to a new sci fi series, injecting freshness into this tired genre? (It seems loads of new sci fi series are axed after two seasons these days)

If the film industry want more action, they should consider "televising" Arthur C. Clarke's Rama Series.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

See the bullshit thing about Asimov is that he would just pull these giant game changing resolves out of his ass without any foreshadowing and you'd have to wonder if he had been knowing what he was heading towards the whole time...

He really didn't. He wrote these as short stories and novellas for the sf pulps over a number of years, so they have a very episodic kind of evolution to them. Doubtless when he started out to write "The Mule" he knew exactly where that story was going to wind up, but I'd bet money that he wasn't thinking much if at all about creating the Mule on the days that he began the first few stories. He may have launched into many of the stories with something like the thought "how can I make this interesting by twisting it in a different direction than the last?"

He certainly did that with the Robot stories, so assuming a similar process here isn't entirely an unfounded shot in the dark.

Assuming that Asimov anticipated where the stories collected in the first three paperbacks would end is something like assuming that Gene Roddenberry outlined Star Trek The Motion Picture while drafting "The Cage."

 

[stj]

Why are you all wasting time?

D.J. Qualls for the Mule and Chloe Moretz for Arkady! And Tom Cruise for Bel Riose.

Seriously, it is the psychic powers that is the weakness of the Foundation trilogy, one that takes itself a tad too seriously. Second Foundation ends just as the real thematic questions are just being articulated. And despite the palaver about lack of characters, it is the Mule's thwarted romance with Bayta and the fate of Arkady that drive the two sequels. With strong but really rather simple characters like Han Pritcher or the sentimental Jewish steretypes of the Palvers.

Asimov tries to get back to it with the Galaxia decision but completely muffs it by making it a personal decision. But if you've been a successful, famous man for many years, it's hard to write a serious novel about how people have been victims of blind social forces, and how they can move forward by taking control. The seemingly gimmicky aspect, where psychohistory requires people be ignorant, reflects the imagination of something like Marxism minus any ugly revolutionary or democratic aspects. Foundation can be revised by more clearly focusing on the Quis custodiet custodes? Such a movie could appeal to people who like thematic relevance to real life.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The seemingly gimmicky aspect, where psychohistory requires people be ignorant, reflects the imagination of something like Marxism minus any ugly revolutionary or democratic aspects.

Wrong. It's not a gimmick; it's a perfectly reasonable proposition inspired by the need in many practical engineering problems to reduce the number of modeled interdependencies in order to make obtaining solutions feasible. From a contemporary perspective, the more a system is susceptible to feedback, the more chaotic it becomes, and the less predictable its behavior is, practically speaking. Saying that people must be ignorant in the way that he did simply reduces the level of feedback present in the mathematical model, which is postulated in-universe to be essential for obtaining an accurate prediction. This is right in line with our contemporary understanding of feedback and chaos.

 

[Holdfast]

Why are you all wasting time?

... And Tom Cruise for Bel Riose.

Am I the only one thinking this is some twisted genius right here?

 

[Guy Gardener]

Who's going to play Daneel?

The Immortal robot wandering about through all these adventures?

They should cast an unknown so that you don't start to think deja vu when when you began to notice this same face with different hair showing up century after century.

Although.

Considering what they did with I, Robot... Can we believe that the Foundation will just turn out to be Kull the Conqueror with Spaceships?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Considering what they did with I, Robot... Can we believe that the Foundation will just turn out to be Kull the Conqueror with Spaceships?

Given what happened to Nightfall, you could tell me that it would be Krull with Spaceships and I'd believe you.

 

[Guy Gardener]

Wasn't the castle a spaceship?

It folded space and moved from one point to another.

I have the lyrics of Fame in my head playing right now, but every time the singer should be saying "Fame' she is singing "Krull" instead.

 

[Chaos Descending]

Why are you all wasting time?

D.J. Qualls for the Mule

YES!

and Chloe Moretz for Arkady!

NO!

And Tom Cruise for Bel Riose.

NOOO!!!!

 

[Brandonv]

Who's going to play Daneel?

The Immortal robot wandering about through all these adventures?

It will be interesting to see if they tie into the Robot series, or ignore it entirely. Like I said in my previous post, incorporating Dors into the movie could be helpful if they are wanting to go the action route.

Considering what they did with I, Robot... Can we believe that the Foundation will just turn out to be Kull the Conqueror with Spaceships?

Foundation vs Alien vs Predator

 

[Owain Taggart]

Actually, if they adapt parts of the prequels, it might go a long way to explaining Hari Seldon and the concept of Psychohistory. It could be a prologue of sorts, leading into the regular trilogy with an older Hari Seldon.

 

[Guy Gardener]

I was hung over so bad one morning that after waking up in some one I barely knews basement, I couldn't get up off the floor. In reach however was Foundation. So by the time I was healthy enough to get up, I didn't want to.

Hours later, there's this figure hovering above me who says "Oh, It's that book about the ghost"

The lack of a living Harry Seldon is essential to the story.