According to Deadline, English director Ruper Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) has been tapped to helm Apple TV+’s forthcoming series adaptation of Foundation, based on author Isaac Asimov’s iconic sci-fi book trilogy of the same name. The pilot will mark Sanders’ TV directorial debut with Lee Pace (Halt and Catch Fire) and Emmy nominee Jared Harris (Chernobyl) attached to star.
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Foundation, based on the books that inspired films such as Star Wars, will “chronicle the thousand-year saga of The Foundation, a band of exiles who discover that the only way to save the Galactic Empire from destruction is to defy it.”
Lee Pace and Jared Harris have signed on to portray the roles of Brother Day and Hari Seldon, respectively. Brother Day is described as the current Emperor of the Galaxy while Hari Seldon, is known as a mathematical genius who predicts the demise of the Galactic Empire.
A production by Skydance Television, the 10-episode series is created by David Goyer and Josh Friedman with Goyer also serving as a showrunner. Friedman, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Marcy Ross, and Cameron Welsh are set as executive producers along with Asimov’s daughter, Robyn Asimov.
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The books originally formed a trilogy (which also includes Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation), but Asimov wound up completing seven Foundation books before his passing in 1992.
Originally published as a series of eight short stories in Astounding Magazine beginning in 1942, Foundation offers a complex saga about humans who are scattered on planets throughout the galaxy, living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. A psycho-historian, who can scientifically read the future, sees an imminent empire collapse and sets to work preparing to save the knowledge of mankind.
