"Well, I fucking love the ‘Foundation‘ novels by Isaac Asimov —they’re certainly not unknown, but that’s a set of books I think everyone would benefit from reading,” screenwriter Jonathan Nolan told us in our “Interstellar” interview last week. “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."
Hint much? So the younger Nolan sibling talks about the Asimov books last week and this week it’s revealed that’s really a thing. The Wrap reports that Nolan is writing and producing a series based on Asimov’s trilogy in conjunction with HBO and Warner.
The three books—“Foundation,” “Foundation and Empire,” “Second Foundation”—follow mathematician Hari Seldon, who spends his entire life developing a branch of mathematics known as psychohistory, a concept of mathematical sociology that he uses to predict the future. The Wrap writes, “When he foresees the imminent fall of the Galactic Empire and a dark age that will 30,000 years, he sets out to create a foundation of talented artisans and engineers to preserve and expand on humanity’s collective knowledge with the hope of establishing a new empire.”
Nolan has already worked with HBO on his adaptation of the sci-fi Western “Westworld,” for which he wrote and directed the pilot. Sony acquired rights to “Foundation” for Roland Emmerich back in 2009, but it obviously never came to pass. No word when the pilot will shoot, but it’s an intriguing endeavor.