I think I remember a director/writer/actor talk about it before (maybe Damon or Affleck) and they said that the reason why so many adaptations have absolutely nothing to do with the source material, is because these scripts always end up in the hands of people who have desperate been trying to push their own original stories for countless years, but no one ever wants anything to do with anything remotely fantasy/scifi/whatever unless its an established franchise. They know this and tbey finally have someone paying attention to them, so of course now they're going to say, screw the source material, lets hijack this and use the property as a skin to finally tell my vision and my story and get paid, the studios won't even notice or care.
I think Foundation isn't really a good example tho.
A bunch of old men, scheming and banging their chest about maths wouldn't have made for great TV and replacing your entire cast every couple episodes is obviously a big no-no in TV :D
I don't mind that they made changes to the story in general, obviously Foundation would be a horrendous page-to-screen adaptation. It's the opposite of character focused, after all. I don't hate that they keep characters from era to era, but I think it would have been cool to showcase a ton of good actors as time went on.
What I do find incredibly annoying, is that 80% of the show is just shit they straight up added. Exactly what the post I replied to was talking about. Fucking clone emperors? Spacers? Multidimensional magic devices? Black hole weapons? Those aren't changes to foundation, those are a different story altogether.
As soon as I realized the majority of the producers efforts were being spent on the clone emperor story, I realized this was yet another case of someone who was fucking desperate to tell their story, not the story they've been hired to adapt to screen.
It's not that the clone stuff is a bad story, it's quite compelling. It's just not... Foundation. The thing I actually wanted to watch.
Also to the point of switching out actors, Netflix did that with Altered Carbon where they replaced the lead actor with another as it's how the sci-fi tech in the series works and the show immediately imploded.
Some plot points are not adaptable to an enjoyable watch for most people. Sure, the hardcore fans might understand, but the vast majority of viewership would leave.
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u/[deleted] Aug 12 '26
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