The Upcoming Foundation Movies Will Be Directed By . . . Roland Emmerich?

From ComingSoon.net:

It's Day 3 of Comic-Con and ComingSoon.net had a chance to sit down with Roland Emmerich to talk about his new movie 2012. Before we wrapped up, we asked what was going on with Emmerich's adaptation of Isaac Asimov's sci-epic Foundation, and we learned that Oscar-nominated writer Robert Rodat (Saving Private Ryan, The Patriot) has been hired to adapt it.

"'Foundation' is my first attempt to do a series of movies, because we're developing three movies: 'Foundation,' 'Foundation and Empire' and 'Second Foundation,'" he told us. "It took me a long time to actually wait for the moment where the rights were totally free and we got them all, it's like 11 books, and we own the title 'Foundation' and also some of the robot novels and now we can really do these. I just hired a very good writer, the writer of 'Saving Private Ryan' who wrote 'The Patriot' for me and he's incredible. He is the most knowledgeable person I ever met about the 'Foundation' novels. It's great to write with somebody like that because there's no, 'I'll just look in the book and see what's there'... he knows it. I had a certain idea and he had a certain idea and that together I think will make this a movie." * * *

For those of you who've never heard of Roland Emmerich, he's the guy who directed Universal Soldier, Independence Day, Godzilla, and The Day After Tomorrow, so I'm having a hard time seeing a maker of summer-time popcorn flicks being able to effectively handle Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. I hope he can pull it off, though, because I've been wanting these movies made since I was a kid.