Yesterday, when I sat down for Apple’s WWDC 2020 keynote, I did not expect to get any announcements about new original content for Apple TV+. After all, WWDC is about software announcements and mainly directed towards the developer community.
But there, in the middle of a boring segment on Apple TV and tvOS, Apple dropped the bomb. They’re going to do something nobody has managed to do properly in 50 years. They’re going to do Foundation, by Isaac Asimov, on Apple TV+.
The teaser video for Foundation looked amazing. Screen capture from WWDC 2020 live stream.
As the teaser video started rolling, I was completely blown away. The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov was such an important part of my youth. It’s the main reason, in addition to Star Trek and Star Wars, why I am the sci-fi geek I am today.
The first book in the Foundation series (simply called Foundation) was published already in 1951. The series has had a great influence on the entire genre and several later sci-fi smash hits, most notably Star Wars, owe a lot of thanks to the Foundation series.
Here’s a brief summary of the Foundation story from Wikipedia:
In the waning days of a future Galactic Empire, the mathematician Hari Seldon spends his life developing a theory of psychohistory, a new and effective mathematical sociology. Using statistical laws of mass action, it can predict the future of large populations. Seldon foresees the imminent fall of the Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a dark age lasting 30,000 years before a second empire arises. […] Seldon devises a plan by which "the onrushing mass of events must be deflected just a little" to eventually limit this interregnum to just one thousand years. To implement his plan, Seldon creates the Foundations […]
Interestingly, there haven’t been any notable TV or movie adaptations of the Foundation series. I wonder why that’s the case? Certainly complex and multifaceted stories have been told before on the big screen. Just think about Lord of the Rings. Perhaps the answer is that nobody has had the same courage to tackle Foundation as Peter Jackson had with LOTR.
In any case, I’m super excited that Apple has decided to pursue this challenge and I’m really hoping that this could be the Game of Thrones (GoT) moment for Apple TV+. I mean, GoT represented an equally unexpected genre (i.e. fantasy) to achieve massive fandom and mainstream adoption. But it did, thanks to a fantastic story with great characters, a massive budget, and proper cinematography.
I believe that Foundation, with the right kind of backing from Apple, has the potential to become just as big of a phenomenon as GoT became.