Even though we now know more about the red planet than ever before, Hollywood still wants to make The Princess of Mars. It was optioned by Paramount two years ago for a hefty $300,000, paid against a purchase price of $2 million, for the rights to the first three titles in Edgar Rice Burroughs's 11-volume Del Rey series. Alphaville Prods is developing the first book with director Robert Rodriguez, to produce a holiday "tentpole" picture designed to start a new franchise, with plenty of material for sequels in the following 10 volumes. Paramount has also just announced a pairing with DreamWorks to produce an adaptation of H.G. Wells's War of the Worlds (a Tor paperback), with Tom Cruise starring and Steven Spielberg possibly directing.
With the out-of-this-world success of The Lord of the Rings, Hollywood seems to be tackling the SF/fantasy genre with renewed vigor. This is also partly because, with classic properties, there are two demographics targeted—older, built-in fans and the new generation. Also, special effects technology has become so sophisticated that film can now do justice to the great SF and fantasy sagas.
This looks like it will be Asimov's year, with the release of I, Robot on July 16, starring Will Smith and directed by Alex Proyas. Ralph Vicinanza, agent for the Asimov estate, told PW how the film came about: "20th Century Fox optioned I, Robot in 1999, and Jeff Vintar wrote a screenplay using elements from the stories, incorporating Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics, which say that a robot cannot harm a human; therefore, a robot cannot commit murder. If this law is broken, then anything can happen."
Bantam, Asimov's paperback publisher, is issuing a movie tie-in edition of I, Robot as well as a hip, small-format hardcover. Anne Groell, Bantam senior editor, explained that the house is updating the look of the books to attract a new generation of readers. The first three novels in the Foundation series will be reissued both as small, collectable hardcovers and as mass-market paperbacks in June. In September, the rest of the Foundation series will follow, extending to the entire Asimov backlist as it is reprinted.
The Foundation series has been optioned by various producers for more than 10 years. It's currently at 20th Century Fox, with Shekar Kapur attached to direct and Jeff Vintar adapting the first three novels. Vicinanza said, "Part of the problem with developing a movie from the series is that there are so many different stories to tell, but we are getting very close to a clear vision of what the movie will be."
Vicinanza explained the challenges of representing Asimov's work: "Asimov started the Robot and Foundation series independently. He wrote them simultaneously in the 1940s and '50s, often writing individual stories for magazines. Later, in the 1980s and '90s, he wrote novels which married the two series and certain characters crossed over. This was a nightmare for us as agents. So we sold Universal the characters and the plot settings as they appear in Caves of Steel, Naked Sun and Robots of Dawn. Fox owns all the settings and characters pertaining to Foundation. If Fox makes a movie of a later Foundation story and uses some of the robots in the Robot series, they are entitled to do so, but only in the context of Foundation."
