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Jonathan Nolan developing Asimov's Foundation to HBO

It is amazing when one considers that the Saga spans decades. Unique and deserving of the utmost good treatment. I also agree with your assesment of "Period Piece" instead of "Space Opera." The costuming, the music, the settings, even the dialect could be presented in a way to show that span of time and asequential nature of the prose.

Son of a Spacer, I am really getting excited.
 
Of course they're not going to try to use costuming or music or whatever that fits the period when the stories were written. They're not targeting people who've already read the stories and are nostalgic for them, because the percentage of Americans who actually read books is a tiny, tiny fraction of the population that watches television. Most of the target audience for this show will have no prior experience with Foundation and won't be interested in '50s nostalgia. The show will be made to work as a television show for a modern HBO audience, and that means the stories will be reworked and rearranged and reinvented and modernized as necessary to be accessible to that audience.
 
I'd also suggest the majority of the audience who has read the books didn't read them when they were first released (when they weren't actually books, fwiw) and, either way, might not prefer something that reminds them of the past instead of the future. I read them in the mid-2000s and never thought of them as 1950s stories.
 
I'm happy it's Nolan an company rather than Emmerich. Can't wait for this!!

It's a given that storytelling for the visual medium is totally different than for novels, so I wouldn't expect am exact representation. My kind goes back to The Sentinel, Clarke's short story turning into 2001 as an extreme example..
 
Christopher said:
Of course they're not going to try to use costuming or music or whatever that fits the period when the stories were written. They're not targeting people who've already read the stories and are nostalgic for them, because the percentage of Americans who actually read books is a tiny, tiny fraction of the population that watches television. Most of the target audience for this show will have no prior experience with Foundation and won't be interested in '50s nostalgia. The show will be made to work as a television show for a modern HBO audience, and that means the stories will be reworked and rearranged and reinvented and modernized as necessary to be accessible to that audience.
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I don't think I was proposing that the series would actually be done like this--I am talking about what I would like to see.

One of my pet peeves in science fiction, fantasy, and even period pieces are that they still retain features of the period in which they were completed (think of the hair styles and dress in 2001). It would be nice to see a series that bucks that convention for once.
 
HIjol said:
Owain Taggart said:
I think I'd like to see them use Holst, which would fit in with the old-school sci-fi feel of the stories.
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You could slot Holst in with no problem, and I like your idea of the match with "...the old-school feel..."
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Yeah, and if that's too limiting for a soundtrack, then get someone like Giacchino to compose a Holst-like soundtrack to allow for different themes and variations throughout. I kind of see where Christopher is coming from, but I was thinking more in terms of something to set the vibe and feeling of the show, and I feel it's appropriate, modern or not.
 
First off, I doubt they'd use stock music to score it rather than hiring an original composer. That's not generally done in this day and age. Second, back in the days when it was done, Holst's The Planets was used to score so many sci-fi productions that by now it's just about the most cliched idea imaginable.

Besides, a composition that's about the planets of the Solar System (or really, the mythological deities they're named after) hardly seems appropriate for a series set in a far-future galactic civilization where the Solar System is a forgotten, insignificant backwater.
 
Alidar Jarok said:
I'd also suggest the majority of the audience who has read the books didn't read them when they were first released (when they weren't actually books, fwiw) and, either way, might not prefer something that reminds them of the past instead of the future. I read them in the mid-2000s and never thought of them as 1950s stories.
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I dunno. Anacreon's coal-powered starships scream 1940s to me. :)
 
This ought to be an interesting project, I particularly look forward to watching them find a way to portray how the Second Foundation members communicate non-verbally.
I think that it could make a good mini-series, but there will be a need to add a lot of meat to the rather sparse frame work of the story.
 
Anybody else thinks that in GOT the world itself and the power game is the main character consdering the casual way characters go tro8ugh great suffering and die. I admit i never read the Foundation but on Grantland the main complaint was that the world/civilisation itself is the main character in the books.
 
Jedi_Master said:
This ought to be an interesting project, I particularly look forward to watching them find a way to portray how the Second Foundation members communicate non-verbally...
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I am thinking of a very very very very early Star Trek episode...

:lol:
 
Fashion.

Every leap of 50 years has to look completely different from the last.

Although, fashion in he Empire should remain static for the entire 500 year span of the story because it's soul is dead?

Or should their rates of fashion be cycling 4 times as fast because of the decadence without morality and an obsession of form over function?

Hmmm?

Is it still going to be about preserving atomic power, or are they going to invent a super science like dark matter engines or quark forges? Because 50 years into the Encyclopaedia the four empires had already lost the specialism to use atomic energy.

Coal powered spaceships?

No, silly. They had the old tech, ships that were 80 years old, the Periphery just couldn't build new reactors or figure out how to look after what they had very well.

But as far as fashion goes, it seems like they need to get all the losers from a couple years of America's next top Designer and put them in a sweat shop.
 
Guy Gardener said:
Fashion.

Every leap of 50 years has to look completely different from the last.

Although, fashion in he Empire should remain static for the entire 500 year span of the story because it's soul is dead?

Or should their rates of fashion be cycling 4 times as fast because of the decadence without morality and an obsession of form over function?

Hmmm?

Is it still going to be about preserving atomic power, or are they going to invent a super science like dark matter engines or quark forges? Because 50 years into the Encyclopaedia the four empires had already lost the specialism to use atomic energy.

Coal powered spaceships?

No, silly. They had the old tech, ships that were 80 years old, the Periphery just couldn't build new reactors or figure out how to look after what they had very well.

But as far as fashion goes, it seems like they need to get all the losers from a couple years of America's next top Designer and put them in a sweat shop.
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I would imagine they would invent a new "super special" tech for the Empire, as atomic power isn't all that cool anymore.

They will definitely go over the top with the Imperial fashionistas, perhaps dressing them like the Capital residents in the Hunger Games.
 
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