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'Interstellar' co-writer Jonathan Nolan is adapting Asimov's 'Foundation' for HBO

'Interstellar' co-writer Jonathan Nolan is adapting Asimov's 'Foundation' for HBO

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Jonathan Nolan, brother of director Christopher Nolan (and co-writer of most of his films, including Interstellar) is turning Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy into an HBO series, according to The Wrap. It's actually his second science fiction adaptation for HBO in development. The first is an adaptation of Michael Crichton's 1973 film Westworld now starring Anthony Hopkins and Evan Rachel Wood (Jonathan co-wrote and directed the pilot).

As noted by The Wrap, Nolan actually talked about Foundation in a recent interview with IndieWire when asked about his favorite piece of science fiction that "people don't know enough about." Here's the now-not-so-subtle tease:

Well, I fucking love the "Foundation" novels by Isaac Asimov — they're certainly not well-known, but that's a set of books I think everyone would benefit from reading. That's a set of books where the influence they have is just fucking massive; they have many imitators and many have been inspired by them, but go back and read those, and there are some ideas in those that'll set your fucking hair on fire.

Foundation tells the story of mathematician Hari Seldon who can predict the future using algorithms... which, now that I think about it, is an idea that's explored in his other science fiction show, CBS's Person of Interest.