The prolific creator behind the hit television adaptation Fargo has his sights set on the world of mutants coveted by Fox. But just like Noah Hawley’s version of the Coen Brothers’ award-winning film has only tertiary connections, so too does Legion, a series starring Professor Xavier’s son.
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In a new profile for Variety, Hawley reveals just how strongly the FX Network‘s new X-Men-related series will tie in to its film counterparts. The answer? Not very much.
“With the X-Men comics, there are a lot of alt universes, so that has allowed me some leeway,” Hawley said to the outlet. “And obviously it’s a sort of origin story for David [Haller, the titular Legion], but none of the other characters that I’ve surrounded him with are from the comics. It’s sort of an invented world.”
The series stars Dan Stevens as the main character, a man diagnosed with schizophrenia. In the comics, David’s mutant abilities manifest as different personalities, all with their own superpowers. They all vie for control, making him both friend and foe to the X-Men and his father.
“If you have a character whose experience of reality is unusual, that’s the show,” Hawley said. “You shouldn’t look at him from the subjective, normal point of view.”
Hawley explained that stories on television or on film will “sacrifice everything for clarity. They’ll sacrifice the joke. They’ll sacrifice the moment, or the romance.”
He hopes Legion will be something unique because of it’s unique main character and his outlook.
“But that brings you to a place that’s surreal, which is not something that television does,” Hawley said. “It might take dramatic risks and tell you antihero stories, but it’s very rare that it does something surreal.”
After the amazingly successful seasons of Fargo, all eyes are on Hawley to deliver yet another hit. Legion is the third series on which he’s serving as showrunner, including Fargo and the still-in-production adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Cat’s Cradle.
Hawley is also directing both the pilot for Legion and the premiere of Fargo‘s third season, which is starting production soon. And while he could have passed off all of these duties to others, he decided to enact his own unique vision.
“For better or for worse I followed up a really hard-to-execute, high-degree-of-difficulty show, Fargo, with a show that only existed in my head, where no one else could really make it,” Hawley said of Legion. “It’s a narwhal. It’s a unicorn.”
Legion premiers February 8th and if the fan response is anything like it was for Fargo, he might deserve a break. He just won’t get it any time soon.
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Noah Hawley serves as Executive Producer, along with Lauren Shuler Donner, Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, Jeph Loeb, Jim Chory and John Cameron.
Legion, based on the Marvel Comics by Chris Claremont and Bill Sienkiewicz, is the story of David Haller (Dan Stevens), a troubled young man who may be more than human. Diagnosed as schizophrenic as a child, David has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years. Now in his early 30s and institutionalized once again, David loses himself in the rhythm of the structured regimen of life in the hospital: breakfast, lunch, dinner, therapy, medications, sleep. David spends the rest of his time in companionable silence alongside his chatterbox friend Lenny (Aubrey Plaza), a fellow patient whose life-long drug and alcohol addiction has done nothing to quell her boundless optimism that her luck is about to change. The pleasant numbness of David’s routine is completely upended with the arrival of a beautiful and troubled new patient named Syd (Rachel Keller). Inexplicably drawn to one another, David and Syd share a startling encounter, after which David must confront the shocking possibility that the voices he hears and the visions he sees may actually be real.
A haunted man, David escapes from the hospital and seeks shelter with his sister Amy (Katie Aselton).But Amy’s concern for her brother is trumped by her desire to protect the picture-perfect suburban life she’s built for herself. Eventually, Syd guides David to Melanie Bird (Jean Smart), a nurturing but demanding therapist with a sharp mind and unconventional methods. She and her team of specialists – Ptonomy (Jeremie Harris), Kerry (Amber Midthunder) and Cary (Bill Irwin) – open David’s eyes to an extraordinary new world of possibilities.
Legion premiers February 8th.
