Roland Emmerich Does Asimov

Roland Emmerich will direct the Isaac Asimov science fiction trilogy Foundation as a feature film for Columbia, Variety reports today. Columbia won the screen rights Thursday through an old fashioned thumb wrestling war. OK, so it was an auction... The influential series dates back almost 70 years, when the trilogy was first presented as eight short stories in Astounding Magazine in 1942, and introduced readers to humans living on various planets throughout the galaxy, living under the thumb of the Galactic Empire. One man who can look into the future sees the whole galaxy collapsing, "and sets to work preparing to save the knowledge of mankind." Always have a backup disc, people. But that story may be less interesting than how this deal got made. Apparently, Fox would've been compensated for its development costs had it been turned into a film before its option lapsed. However, Warner Bros. apparently saw this deal as troublesome in light of its own negotiations over Watchmen. Variety indicates that Fox planned to make a new deal for Foundation after the option expired. However, there were other bids: Warner Bros. was eyeing it as an Alex Proyas film, and Sony/Columbia turned up late in the proceedings with Emmerich's name attached. It's a great vehicle for a director like Emmerich, who likes his movies to be huge, and since he's not coming up with the original idea himself, it's even better. Sony and Emmerich have the disaster movie 2012 in theaters this summer.

Comments

[Lengthy Johnson]

We'll see. Emmerich has made two decent movies (Independence Day and The Patriot) out of a dozen released so far.

The Foundation series is a fascinating piece of writing but it is extremely slow-paced and long-winded.

To adapt it into a watcahble movie is a challenge for anyone, but I don't suppose Emmerich will keep much of the original elements.

[Shamek]

Roland Emmerich has made NO decent movie... Stargate was acceptable. The rest was weak though bad to worse.