Wow. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels have long sat on that imaginary list of “unadaptable” properties – books people would love to film but that everybody figures would be next to impossible to translate to the screen. Well, Gilliam pulled off Fear and Loathing and Jackson did rather well with Lord of the Rings and it looks as though Foundation will be the next to be scratched off that list. According to SciFi.com Jeff Vintar is currently at work writing a two film adaptation of the trilogy that will focus primarily on the second two novels with the first existing largely as backstory. Shekhar Kapur is slated to direct.
The talent announced so far looks pretty much like a good news / bad news situation to me thus far. Vintar is also the man responsible for the adaptation of Asimov’s I Robot which apparently has little resemblance to the source material whatsoever. Foundation is pretty much a sacred text to the sci-fi community so if he messes with it there will be a legion of angry, technically savvy geeks parked outside his front door yearning to do unpleasant things to him. The prospect of Kapur directing, though, has me strangely excited and I’m not sure why. The man is best known for period drama – Elizabeth was his doing – and though he’s shown nothing whatsoever to indicate he’s a sci-fi fan I think his ability to distill complex histories into a compelling film that has me thinking he’s the man to handle the incredibly weighty material of Foundation. Here’s hoping they do it justice …
