Apple Orders ‘Foundation’ Series Based on Isaac Asimov Novel

Apple has added another series to its roster, picking up a drama based on Isaac Asimov’s classic sci-fi novel Foundation.

David S. Goyer (Krypton, Batman Begins) and Josh Friedman (Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Avatar 2) will serve as showrunners.

The initial order for the Skydance Television-produced project is 10 episodes. The series will chronicle the thousand-year saga of The Foundation, a band of exiles who discover the only way to save their Galactic Empire is to defy it.

Goyer and Friedman will not lack for source material. Asimov’s Foundation series, which began as a set of short stories first published in the 1940s, grew to encompass eight novels. Asimov eventually linked the series to his Robot stories to form a greater cosmology. Foundation also influenced the storytelling in Star Wars and countless other sci-fi works.

Several TV and movie adaptations of Foundation have started and stopped over the past 20 years, beginning with New Line Cinema’s attempt to develop it as a film franchise. That fell through, as did another crack at a film at Sony in 2009 and an HBO series adaptation in 2014. Skydance acquired the rights in 2017 and brought Goyer and Friedman aboard to adapt the books.

Apple won a round of competitive bidding to land the project in April.

In addition to co-writing and showrunning, Goyer and Friedman will executive produce Foundation with Robyn Asimov (the late author’s daughter) and Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross.

Related Stories

Related Story

Apple's Big TV Push: A Comprehensive Guide to All Its Programming