Apple premieres new 'Foundation' trailer before series debut on September 24

A new trailer for upcoming Apple TV+ series "Foundation" helps set the mood before the series premieres later this fall.

The series is based on the award-winning novels by Isaac Asimov, which follows a group of exiles on a journey to save humanity and rebuild civilization.

Initially a trilogy, Isaac Asimov's "Foundation," was considered unfilmable even before he added a further four novels to the series. This was largely because Asimov was more interested in ideas than characters and discarded all of them to have his "future history" story span a thousand years.

According to producer David S. Goyer, Apple had asked him to pitch the story in one sentence. After describing the series as a "1,000-year chess game," Apple decided to commission the project.

"Foundation" is written by Josh Friedman and Goyer, who also serves as showrunner and executive producer. The series stars include Jared Harris, most recently seen in "Chernobyl," and Lee Pace from "Halt and Catch Fire."

In January of 2020, "Foundation" was hailed to be Ireland's largest production ever, employing over 500 people while being shot on-location in Southern Ireland.

In March of the same year, production on the show ground to a halt as countries began instating lockdowns to deal with the coronavirus.

7 Comments

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OctoMonkey 4 Years · 343 comments

About 3 years ago

Wow... Apparently I need to re-read Foundation. This trailer bears no resemblance to what I imagined or envisioned the story to be.

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marktime 10 Years · 41 comments

The Apple series seems to be more of a prequel as opposed to the original trilogy of Foundation, Foundation & Empire, Second Foundation.

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mknelson 9 Years · 1148 comments

OctoMonkey said:

Wow... Apparently I need to re-read Foundation. This trailer bears no resemblance to what I imagined or envisioned the story to be.

Ditto (probably haven't read since the '80s).

There were some great discussions here in the forums (and in the article above) and on ArsTechnica expounding on how Isaac Asimov was great at the big Sci Fi concept, but not so big on characters. That means the screenwriters have had to be creative in order to produce a drama and not a documentary.

ndornquast 7 Years · 17 comments

I am almost done re-reading series. Trailer shows more from "Forward the Foundation".. the second prequel. Seems a good place to start. First prequel is really about Seldon grappling with the concepts of Psycohistory and whether it could even be developed from a concept into a useable science. Meanwhile, the original first book, Foundation, really lacks the the story and purpose of Seldon's Psycohistory and it's development and challenges.

It appears Apple is taking quite a few liberties.. as well they should. While Asimov imagined much.. a story from 1951 - 70 years ago - makes a number of bad assumptions. Plus, when trying to tell a story told in 7 books which span a thousand years.. you have to make some significant changes. That said, what I see in the previews so far has me very, very excited. Looks AWESOME!

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mjtomlin 20 Years · 2690 comments

OctoMonkey said:

Wow... Apparently I need to re-read Foundation. This trailer bears no resemblance to what I imagined or envisioned the story to be.

Never read the books, so I don't really care how close the series follows them as long as the series can stand on its own. And from these first three trailers, it looks EPIC! And you have to consider that not always can you translate from book to film and remain 100% on point. As long as the underlying narrative is there, should be acceptable.

Side note: was watching the trailer for Dune, and someone else made a remark similar to this - that it trailed off from the original story. Granted the person who said has a terrible memory. So, there's that. Haha.

Another side note: I read the short story, "Story of Your Life" and loved it and was extremely excited when they were making it into a movie. I equally loved the movie even though there was a lot added and changed. But the core of the story was still intact.