Roland Emmerich Adapting Asimov's 'Foundation' Trilogy

In news that is sure to depress hardcore Sci Fi fans, Variety have revealed that Columbia have won the rights to the legendary sci fi authors Foundation trilogy and have set German helmer Emmerich to direct. Columbia beat out Warner Brothers and Fox for the rights to the sci fi tale. Had Warners won Alexy Proyas would have been directing.

Here is the Wiki run down on the plot:

The premise of the series is that mathematician Hari Seldon spent his life developing a branch of mathematics known as psychohistory, a concept devised by Asimov and his editor John W. Campbell. Using the law of mass action, it can predict the future, but only on a large scale; it is error-prone on a small scale. It works on the principle that the behaviour of a mass of people is predictable if the quantity of this mass is very large (equal to the population of the galaxy which has a population of around a quadrillion). The larger the mass, the more predictable is the future.

Using these techniques, Seldon foresees the fall of the Galactic Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way, and a dark age lasting thirty thousand years before a second great empire arises. To shorten the period of barbarism, he creates two Foundations, small, secluded havens of all human knowledge, on opposite ends of the galaxy. The focus of the trilogy is on the Foundation of the planet Terminus. The people living there are working on an all-encompassing Encyclopedia, and are unaware of Seldon's real intentions (for if they were, the variables would become too uncontrolled). The Encyclopedia serves to preserve knowledge of the physical sciences after the collapse. The Foundation's location is chosen so that it acts as the focal point for the next empire in another thousand years (rather than the projected thirty thousand).

Personally I don't think it sounds particularly interesting anyway but hardcore fans will no doubt be in dismay at this work landing in the hands of a director not known for subtlety or depth, Emmerich's credits don't suggest the guile required to pull off complex sci fi and while I am not sure Asimov fans have ever truly been happy with any of the adaptions of his work, Blade Runner included, this is by far their darkest day.