Roland Emmerich Puts Foundation On The Back Burner, Thank Goodness

Is Roland Emmerich really going to adapt Isaac Asimov's Foundation books? Maybe, but he's doing another movie first. And he's making the writer rewrite the script so the movie will have "a hero" and "a bad guy." Minor spoilers ahead.

Emmerich is going ahead with his next movie project — Anonymous, which is based on the longstanding theory that Shakespeare's plays were actually written by the 17th Earl Of Oxford. He already has Vanessa Redgrave, David Thewlis and Rhys Ifans signed up to star.

So what about Foundation? Emmerich tells Empire Magazine that he might do the Asimov adaptation after Anonymous, but it depends on the script, which is currently being written by his The Patriot screenwriter, Robert Rodat. He says the script is "240 pages long! I said, ‘You know what guys? Edit it down to at least under 200 pages.'"

But he adds that he's enthusiastic about the material, which he wants to do entirely in CG and 3-D motion-capture:

I'm really into it. I worked with Bob on the story for weeks, sitting in a room trying to figure out how to make all the loose stories [work] and put them in a box called ‘Foundation'. Bob's perfect for this thing - he also knows as a writer he has to find the hero and a bad guy in the piece. We had to come up with characters that go through [the series], which is very hard.

So are you more horrified by Emmerich's description of his ideas for a Foundation script, or more relieved that he's not going to get to it any time soon? [Empire]