How much money is /did apple blowing on its "foundation " series

Cafe Society
,
1

I mean if the previews on youtube are any indication it’s in the low millions …almost makes me wanna get AppleTV via Roku just to watch it

Although I know the big reveals (spoilered at the bottom)at the end tho Ive actually never read the novels in fact only Asimov I’ve read is the original robot series (except I robot) in hs

So is it going to be anything close to the book or just big things go boom?

the ending of the first robot book where the villains make the internal temp of the earth rise a few degrees has implications years later… and R.Daneel ovilaw has been on the moon for a few centuries guiding the world for the day they’d have to evacuate earth

2

All I can say is the trailers have been playing on Apple tv for many months. Probably close to a year.

So I would guess they are spending a butt load.

3

I too am thinking about subscribing in order to get the series. It has been a very long time since I read the Foundation series (first five anyway) and I don’t recall if there was a lot of ‘action’ or not.

4

I’m pretty sure there is practically no action in the Foundation series. Some wars and battles take place, but generally away from the main characters.

I’m tenuously excited for the series and have no qualms about obtaining it for free.

5

I don’t know how much Foundation will cost Apple, but a somewhat comparable (maybe) situation might be the upcoming Lord of the Rings adaptation at Amazon. Amazon acquired the rights for $250 million and apparently will spend another $450 million just on season one.

6

In the thread about the Foundation series trailer, @SunUp says “I think there are more action scenes in a 2:48 trailer than there were in the entire original trilogy plus the two sequels.”

7

There is at least some action that I can recall off the top of my head:

  • in the merchant era I recall some battles and also a time when a priest was hiding on a ship, and the planetary authorities entered the ship and dragged him away
  • In Foundation and Empire there were several space battles and also action on land,
  • later when the Foundation is under attack from the forces of the Mule, and Hari Seldon’s holograph is completely mistaken, also when Arkady’s father steps in to protect the harlequin from being arrested.

And there are lots of times when there is at least a show of force, a large fleet threatening to attack. But admittedly the real draw of the books is not the physical action.

8

Following a link from the Wikipedia article on the series, the Irish Independent says, “With a budget of over €45m, the sprawling Troy Studios in Limerick has become the base for new sci-fi series Foundation, based on the Isaac Asimov work which inspired the Star Wars franchise.”

Now that €45 million budget may only be for the Limerick filming or perhaps it’s for the entire series.

9

even if that 45 mil is the whole budget thats a helluva lot for a tv show … until the LOTR series anyways

10

Most of Asimov’s classic stories, when you break it down, are just a logic puzzle with one or more Sherlock Holmes analogues talking their way through the solution, so a direct adaptation probably wouldn’t make great TV in this day and age.

Maybe it could’ve been adapted in the '50s or '60s when “special effects” meant a matte backdrop and plastic miniatures, Captain Kirk talked his way through problems more often than he solved them with punching, and a cigarette-wielding narrator could explain the moral of the story directly to the audience in the last 30 seconds.

11

For a prestige-type show, it’s not. The Crown, Stranger Things, The Mandalorian are all in the $10-15 million dollar per episode range. So was the last season of Game of Thrones. The Morning Show and See are $15 million per episode. Some of the Marvel tv shows are reported to be $25 million per episode.

The guy running Foundation said the first 2 episodes will cost more than some of the films he’s worked on and he’s worked on several films in the $150-200 million range.

12

well i was thinking the 5 networks on tv …i had not counted what used to be cable…

13

Only one of the shows I mentioned, Game of Thrones, was on cable.

Here’s the rough seasonal budgets of some network tv shows at their high points-
Frasier $125 million
The Big Bang Theory $216 million
Lost $100 million
Friends $180 million
ER $286 million
The West Wing $132 million
Fringe $88 million
CSI: Miami $84 million

14

Some of that is crazy high salaries for the stars, directors and writers. If this show has a cast of unknown actors, the salaries can be much lower.

15

Yeah, but the cost is the cost. It doesn’t matter what you’re spending it on.

16

What did those seasons cost (per episode; most of those were 20-22 episode seasons) if you deduct the crazy high salaries for the stars and showrunners?

17

There’s not a lot of action in the series. Most of it is “off camera”, i.e. even when there is a space battle, it’s happening elsewhere and the characters are merely discussing it.

It was a classic Asimov series, i.e. science and empathy were the ways to save humanity, so Apple is doing the obvious thing - ignoring all that stuff, which wouldn’t translate well to the screen anyway, and turning it into LoTR or GoT with an Asimov veneer.

18

I can’t tell you anything about the show runners, but minus the $1 million each Friend made per episode in the last season of Friends, the show still cost $4 million per episode to produce, or $72 million for the season.

19

Why does Ross, the largest Friend, not simply eat the other five?

20

Googling, this thing is supposed to have ten episodes in the first season, or $40 million.