Science Fiction World

According to SciFiNow, the script for the Foundation movie, Roland Emmerich's hotly anticipated (especially by me) adaptation of the first of Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels, still hasn't reached a stage where production can commence, but the film is moving forward.

SciFiNow quotes Volker Engel, one of the special effects team members likely to be working on the project.

"There's several project's lying around at the moment," said Engel. "Foundation being one of them, and we know a screenplay is being written as we speak; it's not finished yet and is in development."

Engel also appears to confirm that they're aiming for a Foundation movie franchise.

"Roland is such a big fan and just sitting down with him to talk about the possibilities about – I suppose you would call it a franchise – you find it is a very difficult project to develop. For anyone who doesn't know about Foundation, it takes place over such an amazing amount of time."

We last heard that Emmerich expected to see the first draft of the script for the first Foundation film from Robert Rodat (most famous for writing the screenplay to Saving Private Ryan) in the next couple of days (that was in February) and more recently that the movies are likely to be in 3D.

There has been little in the way of news since then, so it's good to hear something, however small. I was beginning to get worried. So many of the films that are officially announced by studios seem to vanish into the ether. I and many others are still dubious that Roland Emmerich has the necessary film making credentials to create an intelligent, subtle adaptation, something Asimov's Foundation books seem to cry out for, but I'm intrigued to find out if he can.