Apple lays down Asimov’s Foundation

US tech giant Apple has ordered a 10-episode adaptation of a sci-fi book series by the late author Isaac Asimov.

Isaac Asimov

Foundation will be produced by Skydance Television and showrun by David S Goyer and Josh Friedman. The pair will also executive produce with Robyn Asimov, the author’s daughter, and Skydance’s David Ellison, Dana Goldberg and Marcy Ross.

Asimov’s Foundation series began as a trilogy of short stories called Foundation, Foundation & Empire and Second Foundation first published in the 1940s. The work has influenced the storytelling of Star Wars and other sci-fi works.

The series follows a mathematician who spent his life developing a branch of mathematics known as psychohistory, a concept of mathematical sociology, which can predict the future on a large scale.

Last month, Apple picked up the rights to adapt Terry Gilliam’s 1981 fantasy film Time Bandits into a TV series for its forthcoming SVoD platform.

The tech giant has also given a straight-to-series order to a scripted comedy from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia pair Charlie Day and Rob McElhenney.

Apple has pledged to invest more than US$1bn in programming for its new platform. The company’s other recent commissions include a drama based on the real-life story of a pre-teen news reporter and an adaptation of Gregory David Roberts’ bestselling novel Shantaram.