Jonathan Nolan has been tied to his brother Christopher Nolan for the majority of this career, having co-written the screenplays for The Prestige, The Dark Knight, The Dark Knight Rises and, most recently, Interstellar. He has, however, started branching out on his own a bit having created “Person of Interest” for CBS and he’s putting together Westworld for HBO. Now, he’s continuing that partnership with HBO as The Wrap reports Nolan is set to write and produce an adaptation of Isaac Asimov‘s “Foundation” trilogy for the cable network.
Here’s the book’s synopsis:
For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. Only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future–a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire–both scientists and scholars–and brings them to
a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. And mankind’s last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and live as slaves–or take a stand for freedom and risk total destruction.
“Foundation” is followed by “Foundation and Empire” and “Second Foundation“, all of which collectively won a Hugo Award for “Best All-Time” series in 1966. Asimov then followed those up with sequels “Foundation’s Edge” and “Foundation and Earth,” as well as prequels “Prelude to Foundation” and “Forward the Foundation.”
[amz asin=”B000FC1PWA” size=”small”]Nolan actually discussed the trilogy in a recent interview with The Playlist when asked what the one piece of science fiction he truly loves that people don’t know enough about. He answered, “I fucking love the ‘Foundation’ novels by Isaac Asimov — they’re certainly not well-known, but that’s a set of books I think everyone would benefit from reading. That’s a set of books where the influence they have is just fucking massive; they have many imitators and many have been inspired by them, but go back and read those, and there are some ideas in those that’ll set your fucking hair on fire.”
The “Foundation” series was previously set up at Sony with Roland Emmerich attached to direct back in 2009. Two years later they tried again with Dante Harper attempting to write the screenplay, after which HBO snatched up the rights earlier this summer.
Obviously the most exciting thing here is the idea of a cerebral sci-fi feature coming to the small screen in a big way. Will be interesting to see how it turns out and with the Nolan name attached it could attract some heavy hitters both in front and behind the camera.
