The Covid-19 pandemic all but stopped Hollywood. Production in most movies and television shows (except for a handful of animated shows) became too risky and ceased. It is only in the past few weeks that organizations like SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America have begun publishing guidelines on how cast and crew members could safely return to work. In this calm, however, studios are still putting together their stored images and releasing tempting trailers for upcoming projects. The most recent to bounce on the Internet? A first look at the adaptation of Apple TV + from Isaac Asimov’s beloved Foundation Serie.
Even if you’ve never read Asimov’s novels, which were first published in the 1950s, every science fiction fan has felt his influence, especially on genre classics like Star Wars. Much of the plot relates to the downfall of a certain Galactic Empire (ahem), and a desperately, mathematically heavy, desperate attempt to save human civilization from a vast and grim dark age. The Apple adaptation, which will hit the tech giant’s streaming platform sometime in 2021, features stars like Jared Harris (Chernobyl) and Lee Pace (Stop and set fire), and based on the first teaser, it looks epic. One of the people behind that epic is Leigh Dana Jackson, Foundationco-executive producer. He still can’t talk much about his new show, but WIRED still cared about Asimov, Covid-19, and genre fiction’s unique ability to capture revolution.
Adaptation has to do with balance
Jackson is a man of many authentic science fiction (including the Netflix superhero show Picking up Dion, in which he was executive producer), but did not reach the Foundation writers room like an Asimov stan. He thinks it is a good thing. “When you are adapting things, you are taking them to different places, stretching and compressing. The best rooms are a mix of people who understand gender and people who are not gender, people who love superheroes and people who love stories of father and sons or mother and daughter. The showrunner’s job is to merge those views into something coherent, “he says. “[Executive producer] David Goyer loved and grew up in that book, so the things that are central and central to the book are very much integrated into the series: psychohistory and mathematics and the future of the universe. As someone who didn’t grow up reading Asimov, I had no investment in whether this character spoke a certain way, which meant he was focused on getting [the show] from one emotional place to another emotional place. You always want that mix, or you won’t get a new point of view. “
Foundation It’s huge
Asimov Foundation the series is expanding, and the television adaptation is no different. “Foundation It is by far the biggest and most expansive thing I have ever worked on. It was shot in three countries, none of which is the US, and by the end of season 1, we’ll have filmed in five countries, “says Jackson. “It is appropriate for production to have that scope. It’s a 1,000-year story. “Giant, expensive, multi-location science fiction shows are not always beloved in studios, especially during periods of economic uncertainty: looking at you, Sense8—But according to Jackson, Apple has been extremely supportive of the scale of the project. “It is very different from when I worked in broadcast productions. If he says, ‘Hey, we need three more weeks,’ that’s a much longer conversation. With Apple it’s, ‘OK, let us know when it will be back.’ If we said that production needs to move to a different country because we found a great location, they say, ‘OK, let’s see how we can make it work on budget.’ It’s amazing.”
In Hollywood, Covid-19 is a personal and professional tragedy
Foundation Production was suspended in March due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “As a writer in Hollywood, I am incredibly lucky because I can still do my job from home,” says Jackson. “Most of the people, what they did was closed. Production is gone because it’s not safe and that’s horrible, and that’s most of us. I am heartbroken that we cannot do our work until the federal government decides that they want to trust scientists and protect us all. We are an industry that has been greatly affected. We lost a crew member in my program[[[[Picking up Dion]in Atlanta, and one of our stylists. We are all personally affected. ” Jackson is hopeful that production in Foundation it will resume sooner rather than later. “Our main stages are in Europe, in countries that are super safe right now,” he says.
The other pandemic
Jackson is a black man. He thinks Covid-19 is just one of the two pandemics that are currently ravaging society and its industry. “The first time a police officer threw me into a car for nothing, I was 14 years old walking to my super elite and super expensive high school,” he says. “The only difference now is that we have cameras for cell phones and whites can see exactly what is happening over and over again. You can see those stories we’ve been screaming for decades in a context they can understand. “It’s a weird way for cinematography to have an impact, and Jackson can’t hope that progress won’t stop again.
Genre fiction has always been revolutionary
That does not mean that Jackson is a cynic. He sees genre fiction as Foundation or Picking up Dion as an opportunity to explore ideas and injustices in real life, and always has. “I grew up in the career of Chris Claremont and John Byrne X Men. I was a little kid reading superhero stories where one leader was explicitly an MLK metaphor and the other was explicitly Malcolm X. That was my introduction to the genre, and that was a much cooler way of understanding those concepts than watching the news. ” he says. “It was only recently that I noticed these Gamergate reactionaries, cis-het-white, saying that you can’t be brown or a gender woman. That’s something new to me. The idea of gender as a space to express these things was intrinsic. The idea of gender as an expression of revolutionary thought existed all my life. “
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