Apple TV’s series Foundation, based on the science fiction novel trilogy written by Isaac Asimov, has received a 10-episode straight-to-series order, according to Deadline.
The show, which inspired films such as Star Wars, will “chronicle the thousand year saga of The Foundation, a band of exiles who discover that the only way to save the Galactic Empire from destruction is to defy it.”
Skydance Television acquired the Foundation series in June, according to the report, and hired David S. Goyer (Batman Begins) and Josh Friedman (Avatar 2) to “crack the code” and bring it to the screen. The package was sold to Apple last spring after a competitive bidding war.
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Originally published as a series of eight short stories in Astounding Magazine beginning in 1942, Foundation offers a complex saga about humans who are scattered on planets throughout the galaxy, living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. A psycho-historian, who can scientifically read the future, sees an imminent empire collapse, and sets to work preparing to save the knowledge of mankind.
The books originally formed a trilogy (which also includes Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation), but Asimov wound up completing seven Foundation books before his passing in 1992.
Among the various iterations of Foundation that have been planned over the years include a defunct feature film version from Roland Emmerich and, most recently, an alternate small screen version that Westworld‘s Jonathan Nolan was developing for HBO and Warner Bros. Television.
