Movie News

SDCC Exclusive! Rodat Adapting Foundation for Emmerich

Source:Edward Douglas

July 25, 2009

It's Day 3 of Comic-Con and ComingSoon.net had a chance to sit down with Roland Emmerich to talk about his new movie 2012. Before we wrapped up, we asked what was going on with Emmerich's adaptation of Isaac Asimov's sci-epic Foundation, and we learned that Oscar-nominated writer Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan, The Patriot) has been hired to adapt it.

"'Foundation' is my first attempt to do a series of movies, because we're developing three movies: 'Foundation,' 'Foundation and Empire' and 'Second Foundation,'" he told us. "It took me a long time to actually wait for the moment where the rights were totally free and we got them all, it's like 11 books, and we own the title 'Foundation' and also some of the robot novels and now we can really do these. I just hired a very good writer, the writer of 'Saving Private Ryan' who wrote 'The Patriot' for me and he's incredible. He is the most knowledgeable person I ever met about the 'Foundation' novels. It's great to write with somebody like that because there's no, 'I'll just look in the book and see what's there'... he knows it. I had a certain idea and he had a certain idea and that together I think will make this a movie."

He wasn't sure whether that would be his next movie because he hasn't actually seen a finished script.

Look for our full interview with Mr. Emmerich very soon. Columbia Pictures will release 2012 on November 13.

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COMMENTS (20)

Posted by:

stansmith

July 25, 2009

bill pullman needs to be in all roland emmerich movies. then i'd watch them

Posted by:

Rich Richards

July 25, 2009

Was it too much to ask for a decent director at the helm of such an important series?

That's a lotta dimp!

Posted by:

Jacob

July 25, 2009

finally a science-fiction-movie from emmerich.
no natural disasters.
this will be awesome. watch "moon44" and "das arche noah prinzip" to know he's capable of dong it

Posted by:

Michael Bay

July 25, 2009

Emmerich movies are overblown, explosivefest, none acting crapfest!!!!

Posted by:

RedWhiteandBoom

July 25, 2009

It's good to see more robot movies hitting the screen, especially from Asimov's work. This is exciting.

Posted by:

joe

July 25, 2009

Hack screenwriter. Hack director. Destroyed source material. Nuff 'said?

Posted by:

Zephyr

July 25, 2009

This is such a difficult work to adapt though; there's really no central character other than Hari Seldon, but he's only featured in the first book and the two prequels.

Even the best director/writer team would have trouble bringing this film to life.

Posted by:

Alikhat

July 25, 2009

The trouble with the Foundation series is that the vast majority of people only know it by its glowing reputation, rather than its horribly dated, plodding reality. There's only one truly interesting character in the whole thing, the Mule, and he's underused. The rest are cardboard cut-outs and silly caricatures.

Also, I have a hard time picturing an audience sitting through a feature-length version of Second Foundation, one of the most excruciatingly awful books ever written.

Posted by:

July 25, 2009

I don't really have much faith in the Foundation Trilogy movies. The short story nature of the books will make them very difficult to adapt into movies. At least they've hired someone that's familiar with the source material. The best we can hope for is that he won't completely butcher it.

Posted by:

DICE

July 26, 2009

This Emmerich guy SUCKS