They are totally going to figure out how to make this more Game of Thrones-y. It was probably pitched as “Game of Thrones in SPACE!!!” Note I know it isn’t that but the exec listening didn’t.
Ah, yes – Asimov with a LOT more bloodletting.
And Peter Dinklage as a very charismatic Mule.
And a bunch of topless women.
I can’t remember. Is the Mule supposed to look like he’s got a mutation?
Spoiling just for the heck of it… 
Kinda yes. He’s dwarf-short, with a big nose and is generally ‘funny-looking’ I think, so that he can go undercover as his own clown. Which leads to his downfall in the Bayta Darrell segment; she honestly likes him as he is, and so he can’t bear to tamper with her mind much.
Powell and Donovan! 
You don’t see Selden working in the original, so you can assume computers are behind the curtain. The Three Bs prequels certainly had them.
While the Empire period was stagnant - very little difference in technology between that of Foundation and the novels set at the very beginning of the Empire - they don’t seem to have regressed. After the fall of the Empire certainly. And strictly speaking I doubt an Empire could hold together as long as it did without lots and lots of computers to keep track of things.
I thought of bringing up the possibility of a retro version. I’d like to see it, but I suspect all the attention would be on the coolness of the design as opposed to the plot.
Those stories were designed to be episodic, so that would work really well. Good series. Have to give them a robot as a sidekick, though.
Yeah, I’ve got a feeling that “Violence is the last refuge of the incompentent” is going to be played for laughs, if at all. It will probably be Salvor Hardin’s catchphrase as he snaps the necks of his enemies.
The important thing is to get Will Smith on board.
Groan…
Oh Hell no. Actually, he’d make a decent Hober Mallow, especially during the sales talk scenes.
Or Benedict Cumberbatch. He must play everyone! Wait, no. Cumberbatch and Smith could play all the roles. Even the women!
Not funny looking enough. Warwick Davis.
[hijack!] Is the third volume worth reading? After reading the 2nd, I gathered that there would be less emphasis on the psychohistory determinism of Vol 1, and more emphasis on the main villain. [/hijack]
Are you kidding? Each episode, unless it was a 2 parter, they’d be testing/troubleshooting a different robot. :rolleyes:
I was thinking Brad Dourif for the Mule, but he’s not a dwarf…possibly getting on a bit, as well.
Seconding Fassbender for R Daneel - he’d be perfect.
Yea, I imagine they’ll just take the basic premise and a few memorable characters (basically, Seldon and the Mule) and than write their own thing. A story that leaps hundreds of years between instalments, with most of the characters from the previous instalment being dead or holograms, isn’t really something you can film as is.
Not to mention only three characters in the original trilogy have any ability to influence events. Everyone else is basically just watching history unfold as it was calculated. Which works OK in short story form, but would be kind of tedious drawn out over a TV series.
Yes. Azimov mixes up the formula from the earlier books, focusing on the main villain instead of jumping centuries at a time, and mixing with the psycho-history ideas a little. But still definitely worth reading.
I wouldn’t bother with the later sequels though. They’re basically Asimov fan-fic, as written by Asimov.
And I’ll bet those clueless execs will also insist that “Second Foundation” be the middle of the three installments.
I’m glad to hear The Foundation Trilogy will be coming to the small screen; I trust HBO to get it right. Hope they’ll just stick to the first three books in publication order. I could see either Morgan Freeman or Kevin Spacey as Hari Seldon. I thought Peter Ustinov would’ve been good in the role, back in the day - or how about Gene Hackman, Michael Caine, or Robert Duvall? I like Fassbender as R. Daneel (although he might not want to play another android).
Yes. They appear in Harlan Ellison’s (IMHO very good) unproduced screenplay for I, Robot, which you can get as a book: I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay: Harlan Ellison, Isaac Asimov, Mark Zug: 9780743486590: Amazon.com: Books