Things are getting messy behind-the-scenes on Apple's Foundation show

AppleTV+’s big-budget, very glossy adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s galaxy-spanning Foundation books has reportedly gotten a bit too big budget of late. Hence news from THR today, which reports that high-profile Dark Knight screenwriter David S. Goyer has departed his role as showrunner for the Lee Pace show’s third season, after clashing with producers about costs.

Goyer will apparently stay on with the series, which tracks the slow fall of a galactic empire and the rise of a new power in its wake, but only as a writer, contributing scripts without actually being on location for the show’s shooting in Prague. He’ll be replaced in those duties by former Skydance TV president Bill Bost, who’ll presumably be keeping a much tighter hand on costs. (Notably, the show’s line producer, whose job typically involves keeping a production under budget, has also been replaced.)

Given that roughly half of its third season had already been shot before last summer’s strikes shut down production, it’s not clear how much this penny-pinching is going to affect what Foundation fans actually see on the screen when the season finally arrives. (No date for season 3 has been set just yet.) It’s really more interesting as a bellweather of the fact that the “throw a billion dollars at the wall to make streaming work, no matter what” era of online TV might well and truly be over: Apple has typically been one of the deepest pocketbooks in streaming, basically allocating as much of its functionally infinite tech cash as necessary to get a foothold in the industry. So if even they’re getting money conscious, the boom might very well be over. For now, Foundation fans can content themselves with the knowledge that Goyer’s writing will still help power the series—even if some of his more galactic ambitions have now been stymied.