[Arkay]

A LOT has to be done right, in order to do justice to a huge film project like the Foundation series.

First, it must be divided into enough instalments (trilogy?) to at least do minimal justice to the story line(s).

Then, it must have a well-written script and well-conceived design, to capture the original writing accurately enough.

Third, it must have someone (like Peter Jackson with LOTR) who CARES enough about the story to do it justice, AND who has the skills necessary to do it well.

There also has to be sufficient budget, combined with enough commitment and patience on the part of the producers and backers, to both see that it gets finished, and to allow enough time for it to be finished well, not overly rushed and compromised.

You need good actors, too.

You need to depend at least as much on realistic filming, good acting, and all the other things that used to make movies good, as on CGI effects. Effects cannot make up for a bad script or bad acting or bad sets, etc... Only within the last few years has CGI begun to reach a visually acceptable level, and it is very expensive to do it at that level. Little is worse than jarringly fake or poorly done CGI that reminds you "it's a movie" just at the critical moments. Hopefully this won't be an issue on a film this big, since the technology exists to do it well.

I'm encouraged by the fact that this project has been picked up by the same people who backed LOTR. At least they have the experience taking on a long and complex story and doing it justice. When it was first announced that Tolkein's trilogy was being put to film, I cringed in horror... but the result, I thought, was good; at least a lot better than I had expected it to be. Fingers crossed that this will be done with equal commitment, and come out as well. Fingers crossed, too, that they will make the same filming commitment to multiple films at once, as they did with LOTR. Trying to cram that whole narrative tapestry into a single 100-minute film would be a formula for failure.

I wish them luck, and genuinely hope they pull it off well; it sure would be nice to see a GREAT film job done of that story. As nice as it would be awful to see a typical Hollyweird hatchet job done on it.