X-Men TV Series Legion Will Tell New Stories

After the attention-grabbing first trailer was released during San Diego Comic Con and Bryan [...]

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After the attention-grabbing first trailer was released during San Diego Comic Con and Bryan Singer ("X-Men: Days of Future Past," "X-Men: Apocalypse") confirmed it is a part of the X-Men universe, interest in FX's Legion has been on the rise.

The show is being developed by Noah Hawley, who is also the showrunner of FX's critically-acclaimed television series Fargo. According to Hawley, the approach he took with adapting the Coen Bros.' 1996 film to television will also be applied to Legion.

"So my approach to the Legion material is similar, which is it's about a respect for the world, but it's not about telling stories in that world that the reader is familiar with," Hawley told IGN. "It's about taking that character and really exploring, almost on an existential level, what it's like… What a television show can do that a movie can't do is it's not just a plot delivery device. It's not about action, it's about character and theme and as we see in Fargo, you can really play with structure and you can deconstruct the story in a big way. Whereas in a two-hour movie, it's 'What's the problem? Where's the bad guy? Let's go get him!'

"So, I would be remiss, I feel like, if I didn't deconstruct this, if I didn't really try to do something for the genre that feels personal and interesting to me and to really explore if you have a character who for his whole life has believed that he's schizophrenic, and is now starting to think that he may have these powers, but he doesn't know and he doesn't know what's real – well, that's the experience the audience should have. To be put into his world is to enter something that's by definition surreal, because he's hearing things, he's seeing things… Are these things real or not real? What can you trust that you're seeing? And he's stuck in this moment until he meets a girl [Syd, played by Fargo's Rachel Keller] and he falls in love and now he's got something to hope for and that's the catalyst that pushes everything forward. And, you know, I can never predict the reaction to the work. With Fargo, I could have done my best work and the reaction could have been the complete opposite. I have no control over that, all I can do is tell the best story that I can tell."

Legion is the story of a troubled young man who may be more than human. It introduces the story of David Haller, who since he was a teenager, has struggled with mental illness. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, David has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years. But after a strange encounter with a fellow patient, he's confronted with the possibility that the voices he hears and the visions he sees might be real.

Dan Stevens ("Downton Abbey"), Rachel Keller ("Fargo"), Jean Smart ("Fargo"), Aubrey Plaza ("Parks and Recreation"), Jeremie Harris ("A Walk Among the Tombstones"), Amber Midthunder ("Hell or High Water"), Katie Aselton ("The League") and Bill Irwin ("Interstellar") star in "Legion." Noah Hawley ("Fargo") will serve as an Executive Producer along with Lauren Shuler Donner ("X-Men: Days of Future Past," "Deadpool"), Bryan Singer ("X-Men: Apocalypse," "Superman Returns"), Simon Kinberg ("X-Men: Days of Future Past," "The Martian"), Jeph Loeb ("Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," "Marvel's Daredevil," "Marvel's Jessica Jones"), Jim Chory ("Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.," "Marvel's Daredevil," "Marvel's Jessica Jones") and John Cameron ("Fargo," "The Big Lebowski"). "Legion" is the latest project from Hawley and Cameron, two of the Executive Producers of the Emmy® and Golden Globe® -winning FX limited series "Fargo."

Production on the eight-episode first season will begin this summer in Vancouver and the new series from FX Productions and Marvel Television will debut globally in early 2017.

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