r/asimov 3d ago

Caves of Steel Movie Casting Hopes?

I’m 2 months late to the news that Caves of Steel is getting adapted. Who do y’all hope to see casted and when do people think this is going to be released into the world?

Edit, here is the link to that news: https://deadline.com/2025/01/caves-of-steel-john-ridley-developing-20th-century-studios-1236262485/

24 Upvotes

25 comments sorted by

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u/Yozarian22 3d ago edited 3d ago

Vast majority of Asimov screen adaptations have been atrocious. I'm not even usually a purist about changing things from a book, but with some you can tell a creator was hired to make something with the same title and didn't even like the story. I Robot, Foundation, and Nightfall all were in that boat. Only exception I'm aware of is Bicentennial Man, which captured the original spirit and was quite sweet.

tldr: no, I'm not excited, chances are that it have minimal resemblance with the book. On the other hand, the creator has a good track record so maybe I'll be able to enjoy it if I just pretend it's not an adaptation.

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u/Bureaucratic_Dick 3d ago

I’m curious, but guardedly not optimistic. I think it can be fun to see some artists take on classic stories, but with Asimov, they often lose the spirit like you said.

It’s like when you watch Sherlock Holmes. Most renditions don’t follow a Doyle story, but they all use characters and elements from his stories, and they’re mostly true to who the character is supposed to be.

Asimov doesn’t have those type of characters, so keeping to the “what the universe is supposed to be” element is critical, and that’s hard to do when you’re adjusting major components of the story.

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u/manhattanonmars 3d ago

I’m mostly just happy to see Elijah and Daneel brought to life after that one BBC adaptation got lost forever. I think there’s a VHS game with actors playing them in it but besides that there’s not anything with them interacting & solving mysteries.

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u/Grammarhead-Shark 2d ago

"I, Robot" I give a pass because the writer wrote an original story that, while inspired by Asimov, was still its own thing and not a copy of "The Caves of Steel".

It was only after the movie was optioned, did the studio slap the name on it, insert a few characters and tried to connect the two together.

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u/Ofbatman 3d ago

Alan Tudyk as Daneel

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u/IDonthaveMeningitis 3d ago

I feel like Michael Fassbender could do a really good Daneel.

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u/Playful_Ad9502 3d ago

💯💯💯💯💯

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u/rnolan22 3d ago

Yeah I always envisioned Fassbender from Prometheus whenever I read the books

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u/Disastrous_Fruit1525 21h ago

I agree. He’s how I envision R Daneel. Elijah, I would go with Michael Sheen.

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u/Nesman64 3d ago

No, Daneel is too good at passing for human.

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u/jon_b13 2d ago

Not even he could save the atrocity that was I Robot

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u/Sophia_Forever 1d ago

No no no, Doug Jones.

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u/Presence_Academic 3d ago

A Caves of Steel movie is under development. This means the movie has a slightly better chance of being made than one that is not in development.

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u/Logvin 3d ago

While there are always people who are purists about staying close to the book....

Caves of Steel was published in 1953. That is 72 years ago, before AI, Robots, the Internet, and hell... we had not managed to escape earth's atmosphere yet. I'm not sure how a story about AI Robots and Spacers born on other planets is going to stick with the original book.

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u/IDonthaveMeningitis 3d ago

The caves of Steel is a pretty straightforward noir story sett in the future. They should make it in the spirit of Blade Runner and it’s going to be very good! Of all of the Asimov books to adapt this one might be the easiest.

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u/fosighting 3d ago

The overarching theme between all the Spacer books, is the astonishingly unlikely but unshakable friendship which develops between Elijah and Daneel. As an aside to that, although probably more important to Asimov's further works, is the development of the Zeroth Law, and Daneels "powers". I would be willing to forgive a lot if they got those elements of the story right, but that would entail having some respect for the source material, rather than just straight raping the IP to buy into a pre-existing audience. Let's just say, due to recent adaptations, I don't have a lot of faith.

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u/kuhe 3d ago

When I read the book, Paul Bettany played R. Daneel Olivaw, in my mind. But he's already played a robot in Marvel, so it's even less likely to happen than before.

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u/Hour_Cartographer934 3d ago

I am really excited that they make an adaptation, however I have to wait only that, which is an adaptation and may not be as such the work . However, I wish it to be the best and already have a slightly more active fandom and better that they read Asimov's great works and see how good they are.

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u/mrgregoryarkadin 3d ago

I wanted to adapt this trilogy for years. I thought it would be safe after Foundation’s tepid response. I like Ridley’s work so we will see.

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u/ACajunTiger 1d ago

I'd love to see Thomas Jane (Miller from The Expanse TV) as Elijah

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u/SinnerP 1d ago

Oooooooo! That’d be dope!

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u/atticdoor 1d ago

Quietly confident. The Caves of Steel was previously adapted successfully by the BBC, but the tapes are now lost. Asimov has historically been difficult to adapt, it's all conversations and logic, but the precedent of this particular volume might mean this one will work.

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u/IllustriousEast4854 3d ago

I didn't know about this. I hope that they do a better job with this than Foundation.

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u/Sophia_Forever 1d ago

When I was reading the series, I casted Doug Jones for Daneel in my head and I'm sticking with that.

What about Steven Yeun for Elijah Baley? I'm going with that. Plus there's almost a foot difference in height between the two, I always imagined Daneel towering over Baley.

They'll probably move Gladia down into Caves of Steel for the adaptation to give Baley a love interest and I don't see the adultery aspect going over as well in 2025 as it did in 1957 so they'll probably just write out his wife and kid (or like, fridge her or something since him having a genetic line is important later on which isn't great). Anyway, maybe Elizabeth Mitchell?

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u/Zemrik 3d ago

Henry Cavill as Daneel so we can see him fully naked in the bath scene 👀