Shaye & Lynne Laying New ‘Foundation’

The movie Gods must be strict creationists. That would explain why the heady sci-fi works of Isaac Asimov have not translated well to the big screen. Sure his writing tends more towards grand ideas than epic scope, but there’s no excusing bastardizations like Bicentennial Man and I, Robot. Yet Hollywood continues trying to crack Asimov’s dystopian worlds. Next up? Robert Shaye and Michael Lynne will attempt an adaptation of perhaps his most non-cinematic work the Foundation trilogy.

Spanning seven volumes, the series begins with a brilliant mathematician who develops a method to predict the future called psychohistory. The method works like gangbusters on a large scale, but is utterly useless on an individual basis. Unfortunately the future he sees for the Galactic Empire is bleak: a thirty-thousand year dark age leading to the rise of a new empire. In an attempt to salvage as much knowledge and art as possible to survive the period, he sets up two Foundations on opposite ends of the galaxy as bastions of humanity’s finest. The hope is to circumvent the dark age and possibly shorten it to a mere thousand years.

The series is almost completely devoid of action, so don’t expect an epic space opera. The filmmakers are wisely focusing on only the latter parts of the trilogy because tackling the entire story in a single film would be impossible. Unfortunately said filmmakers are Shaye and Lynne, who have the dubious honor of running New Line into the ground. The project will be the first by their new shingle Unique Features in conjunction with Warner Bros. Shaye has long loved the trilogy and aims to bring Asimov’s work to a new audience. Of course, he also had a deep admiration for The Last Mimzy and we all know what he did with that (if you were unfortunate enough to see it).

Shaye hopes Foundation will set the umm foundation for his fledgling company. “This epitomizes the movies we want to make, not the movies that ought to be made to fill a slate or movies that repeat an old formula.” Ironically their plans are to replicate the LoTR model by making the full trilogy if the first film plays – but no repeating old formulas. THR also sights the $340 million worldwide BO of I, Robot as proof that Asimov films can make money, but completely miss the fact that the picture was fronted by the most bankable star in the world in Will Smith. So unless they plan to secure his services, selling Foundation to the mass audience will be an up hill climb, and that’s if they actually make a good film. Here’s hoping they find a visionary director to take on the film.