MTV reports that Roland Emmerich, director of the upcoming adaptation of Isaac Asimov's epic Foundation trilogy, will film the three movies in 3-D, using technology similar to the CG motion-capture techniques James Cameron used in Avatar.

When asked if Asimov's Foundation trilogy would be in 3-D and in motion capture, Emmerich replied, "Yes."

He added that:

"Probably now all big movies have to be 3-D. It's not only the effect of 3-D, [Avatar has] just shown that if you do a movie in 3-D, you can ask for more money and that's the trick. I think now everybody who does bigger movies has to shoot them in 3-D. I think there's no way around it. I was on the set of Avatar and I saw how it worked and I really thought, 'That's the ultimate way of making movies.'"

He said he expected to see the first draft of the script for the first film from Robert Rodat (most famous for writing the screenplay to Saving Private Ryan) in the next couple of days.

Last we heard from Emmerich he had said he "wanted to wait for Avatar, to see if the (3-D) technology is already advanced enough,” before deciding whether to film in 3-D. Looks like the answer to that question was a massive "Yes"!

Now let's hope he can add more subtlety and depth than he has shown with some recent productions like 2012. The bigger the fan base, the more attention his efforts will receive, and Isaac Asimov is arguably one of the top four science fiction writers of all time, along with Philip K. Dick, Arthur C. Clarke and Frank Herbert. I'd love to see him get this one right.