I nearly lost my mind when I saw the first trailers for these two productions. Foundation was my gateway into sci-fi as a 13 yr old kid, when my old man gave me his books to read. Dune was similar. For the right type of geeky teen, like I was, it just fit perfectly as my ideal escape.
They both look near perfectly cast, although I have my doubts about Aqua Man. I’ll let it slide though. Foundation, in particular, has the potential to be utterly enormous. Asimov’s books (even most of the not strictly Foundation ones) are the daddy of all connected universes. Dwarfing even Marvel now, and far more subtle as it goes about it too. I wouldn’t be surprised to find his treatise on the slide rule has some connection too 😀 The man was … well, prolific doesn’t really cover it.
Like you @Jonbwfc , I loved the first Dune movie. It seemed to pluck the world straight out of my imagination, right down to Jean Luc Picard as Gurney Halleck. I do think I gave it a lot of leeway, as I filled in the gaps from my knowledge of the books. I remember reading a Frank Herbert short story anthology with a foreword by him, in which he basically cut all ties with the film and the producers. The De Laurentiis family insisted on cutting it to the bone. Iirc, they left 8 to 10 hours of pure story on the cutting room floor, and cut it down so hard it actually didn’t make much sense to people who weren’t well versed in the novels.
Granted that’s a lot of story, but I’d have loved to see it as a trilogy for example.
I’ve already got 12 months of this for free because I got an iPad Pro recently. I’ll take another 6 thank you very much =)