By Hey, you guys remember I, Robot, the sales tool for Converse sneakers starring Will Smith? Well, if you know your classic sci-fi, you know it was an adaptation of a classic set of stories from seminal sci-fi author Issac Asimov. “Adaptation,” in this case, is slang for “butchery,” as the filmmakers took one of the most intelligent looks at artificial intelligence and turned it into Will Smith getting chased by early iPod-looking robots voiced by Wash from Firefly.
Asimov’s other classic sci-fi series, the Foundation trilogy, is currently being headed up by Independence Day and Anonymous director Roland Emmerich. Writer Dante Harper, who wrote an adaptation of Charles Burns’s Black Hole for David Fincher when Fincher was still associated with the project, has just been hired on to re-write the script. Foundation revolves around the work of one Hari Seldon, who creates the field of psychohistory. Psychohistory, in essence, involves using a variety of studies to predict the future of larger groups of people. Seldon, in the books, forsees the rise of humanity’s massive Galactic Empire, as well as its fall. I’m willing to be open-minded about this film, but I really don’t see a movie from Roland Emmerich being subtle enough to make what’s basically a sociology and mathematics thought experiment into a movie. I’m betting a lot on the success of Anonymous to prove he might have the gumption to make Foundation not suck as hard as I’m thinking it probably will be
[Via Deadline]