According to Deadline, the upcoming Apple original drama series Foundation based on Isaac Asimov’s science fiction novel trilogy is set to be Ireland’s largest production ever, potentially creating more than 500 production jobs when shooting begins in Troy Studios in Limerick.
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The series, based on the books that inspired films such as Star Wars, will “chronicle the thousand-year saga of The Foundation, a band of exiles who discover that the only way to save the Galactic Empire from destruction is to defy it.”
Foundation stars Lee Pace (Guardians of the Galaxy, Halt and Catch Fire) as Brother Day, the current Emperor of the Galaxy, and Jared Harris (Chernobyl, The Terror) who will play Hari Seldon, a mathematical genius who predicts the demise of the Galactic Empire.
A production by Skydance Television, the 10-episode series is created by David Goyer and Josh Friedman with Goyer also serving as showrunner. Rupert Sanders (Snow White and the Huntsman) will direct. Friedman, David Ellison, Dana Goldberg, Marcy Ross, and Cameron Welsh are set as executive producers along with Asimov’s daughter, Robyn Asimov.
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The books originally formed a trilogy (which also includes Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation), but Asimov wound up completing seven Foundation books before his passing in 1992.
Originally published as a series of eight short stories in Astounding Magazine beginning in 1942, Foundation offers a complex saga about humans who are scattered on planets throughout the galaxy, living under the rule of the Galactic Empire. A psycho-historian, who can scientifically read the future, sees an imminent empire collapse and sets to work preparing to save the knowledge of mankind.
