Ever since we heard the news that director Roland Emmerich was working on the big-screen adaptation of Issac Asimov’s classic trilogy, “Foundation,” we’ve been wary.

Emmerich is best known for his end-of-the-world, big-budget epics like “Independence Day” and the recent “2012” with spectacle taking precedence over script and story.

Last month, we brought you a story on our Slice of SciFi podcast about how Emmerich said that he felt the only way to achieve his vision for the movie was to take a page from “Avatar.”

That statement did little to calm fears that this project could become the next “I, Robot” on the big-screen.

But Emmerich is still saying he won’t ruin the books and that the novels are in good hands.

“‘I, Robot’ as a book was so much more than it was as a film and I think, because of that, fans were very disappointed,” he tells Empire. “I don’t want to repeat that disappointment; I want to give people exactly what the Foundation trilogy is. You have to tell a story that represents the books but also works as a film. That’s the challenge.”

“Well, it depends on the script,” Emmerich continued. “We’ve got a script from Robert Rodat now and it’s 240 pages long! I said, ‘You know what guys? Edit it down to at least under 200 pages.’”

““I’m really into it. I worked with Bob on the story for weeks, sitting in a room trying to figure out how to make all the loose stories [work] and put them in a box called ‘Foundation’,” he said. “Bob’s perfect for this thing – he also knows as a writer he has to find the hero and a bad guy in the piece. We had to come up with characters that go through [the series], which is very hard.”

Emmerich will begin production on the movie as soon as he has a final script.