Isaac Asimov’s **Foundation **series of books has been a white whale of adaptations for Hollywood for years now, with Roland Emmerich most famously developing a take. It now appears that Interstellar co-writer Jonah Nolan might beat him to it, because The Wrap reports he’s quietly been working on a small screen version for HBO.
Foundation is partly the story of a mathematician called Hari Seldon, who has invented a science called "psychohistory" which can predict the future for large-scale human concerns (so not whether you'll meet a mysterious stranger, but definitely whether civilisation will survive the next millennium). Sheldon sees that the Galactic Empire in which he lives is going to collapse, and that there will be a period of barbarism lasting 30,000 years, but he also predicts that, with the help of psychohistory and a planet called Foundation filled with experts in sciences and philosophy from all over the Empire, that barbaric age can be reduced to 1,000 years. The first book, Foundation, tells the story of that planet. Follow-ups reveal that another planet, Second Foundation, was set up to hold the psychohistorians themselves in isolation, while further adventures revolve around the dvelopment of the plan.
Nolan is already at work with HBO on televised take of another sci-fi concept, Westworld. The channel bought the rights to the Foundation series when they became available earlier this year, signalling that the story’s future might lie there instead of on the big screen. Marrying the resources of HBO with the longer form plot lines of cable does seem a more logical home for Asimov’s concepts, but they’ll still be tough nuts to crack.