Apple today announced that Emmy Award-nominee Jared Harris (Chernobyl) and Lee Pace (Halt and Catch Fire) will star in Apple’s upcoming Foundation, a new drama series based on Isaac Asimov’s novel series of the same name.

Foundation chronicles the epic saga of The Foundation, a band of exiles who discover that the only way to save the Galactic Empire from destruction is to defy it. Harris will star as Hari Seldon, a mathematical genius who predicts the demise of the empire. Pace will star alongside as Brother Day, the current Emperor of the Galaxy.

David S. Goyer (The Dark Knight, Terminator: Dark Fate) will serve as showrunner and executive producer for the series. Skydance Television is producing the series with David Ellison, Dana Goldberg (World War Z, Star Trek: Beyond), Marcy Ross (Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan) serving as executive producers. Josh Friedman (Avatar 4, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles) and Robyn Asimov also serve as executive producers for the series.

Originally published as a short story in 1942, Asimov’s Foundation went on to become a trilogy for decades before additional material expanded the series to seven volumes. It feels like we’ve been waiting decades for the adaptation to get made. Roland Emmerich tried to launch a feature version at Sony in 2011. The rights lapsed in 2014 and HBO picked them up for Jonathan Nolan to turn into a series; he opted for Westworld instead.

Now, with AppleTV+ ready to launch on November 1st, the company is making strides to stay competitive in the streaming-content game by putting some momentum behind this long-awaited project. Harris and Pace are two of the best working today and I can’t wait to see the two of them together on screen. What remains to be seen is if Goyer & Co. can bring the huge ideas of Asimov’s series to bear in a way that does them justice and resonates with audiences. We don’t have a timetable on Foundation just yet, so expect to wait a little while longer to find out.