The Film Adaptation of Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION Has a Writer in Dante Harper!

A few years ago while at SDCC, director Roland Emmerich was there promoting his upcoming movie 2012.  While talking about his film, he was asked what he was going to work on next.  His answer was, Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

To me, this was a blessing in disguise.  I love the Foundation Trilogy, and I would love to see the story brought to the big screen.  However, it is being brought to us by Emmerich.  I have a few things to say about this, but I will get to the point and complain at the end.

Deadline has announced that a writer has been found for the film adaptation of Foundation.  Here is what they reported:

Sony Pictures has hired Dante Harper to adapt Foundation, the groundbreaking Isaac Asimov science fiction trilogy which Roland Emmerich is developing to direct. Emmerich has been attached since the studio acquired the property in early 2009 when he and former Centropolis partner Michael Wimer won a multi-studio auction as the rights became available. Originally published as a short story series in Astounding Magazine in 1942, Asimov’s Foundation is the complex saga of humans scattered on planets throughout the galaxy, all living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. The protagonist is a psycho-historian who has an ability to read the future and sees that the empire will collapse imminently. He sets out to save the knowledge of mankind from being wiped out. Robert Rodat was first writer on the project.

Harper broke onto the scene with a Timothy McVeigh biopic called Dreamland that Plan B is producing. He wrote Black Hole for David Fincher at Paramount and did the production rewrite worl in Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters, which stars Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton. Harper’s big sale came when his script All You Need is Kill was acquired by Warner Bros. The film is on a fast track, with Doug Liman directing. The studio is out to cast and the film is a priority.

I am glad that they are putting some new blood into this project, heaven only knows that Emmerich needs the help.  Emmerich showed so much promise with Stargate, Universal Soldier and even Independence Day.  Then his directing ability took a crap.  The Day After Tomorrow?  10,000 BC?  2012?  Really?  I hope that he is not allowed to screw this up.  Here is a brief synopsis from Amazon for those of you who have not heard of this amazing book trilogy.  Let us know what you think.

For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Sheldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future—to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire—both scientists and scholars—and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a fututre generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.

But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and be overrun—or fight them and be destroyed.

McMurphy Out!