Roland Emmerich, director of the Vancouver-lensed "2012", is developing a 3D trilogy, adapting author Issac Asimov's "Foundation" science fiction novels.
"Probably now all 'big' movies have to be 3D," said Emmerich."I think there’s no way around it. I was on the set of 'Avatar' and I saw how it worked and I really thought, ‘That’s the ultimate way of making movies.’"
"Foundation" was originally a series of eight short stories published in "Astounding Magazine" between May 1942 and January 1950. According to Asimov, the premise of the stories were inspired by ideas from author Edward Gibbon's "History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire".
"Foundation" tells the story of a group of scientists who seek to preserve knowledge as civilizations around them begin to regress. The first story is set on 'Trantor', capital planet of the 12,000-year-old 'Galactic Empire'. While the empire gives the appearance of stability, it is suffering a slow decay.
Main character 'Hari Seldon', a mathematician, has developed 'psychohistory' which equates all possibilities in large societies to mathematics, allowing predictable long term outcomes. Seldon discovers a horrifying truth to the Empire's decay, with his results considered treasonable, attracting attention from the 'Commission of Public Safety', rulers of the Empire. This leads to Seldon's arrest, along with mathematician 'Gaal Dornick', who just arrived on Trantor. On trial, Seldon shares the discoveries made through psychohistory, including the collapse of the Empire within 500 years, followed by a 30,000-year period of barbarism.
Seldon proposes an alternative to this future; one that would not avert the collapse but shorten the period, requiring a large group of people to develop a compendium of all human knowledge titled the 'Encyclopedia Galactica'.
The skeptical commission, worried that Seldon could be revered as a martyr, offer him the choice of execution for treason or acceptance of exile with his group of 'Encyclopedists' to the remote planet 'Terminus'...Click the images to enlarge...
