FX's 'Legion' Characters Won't Be Crossing Into Film Franchise
While speaking at the Television Critics Association press tour, the producers of FX's Legion were asked whether the show will have any crossover into the film franchise. While that looks beyond unlikely, it's likely to the show's benefit, and not its detriment.
Executive producer Lauren Shuler Donner said "for my part, no." She went on to say, "Because I come from the X-Men franchise movies, it was a chance to bring the X-Men to television, to mine some of the characters we haven’t and won’t be using in the film franchise and to open up the universe to some other characters, as television does.”
Executive producer Jeph Loeb called the series an evolution of the superhero genre, saying that "we're just interested in telling really good stories" on behalf of Marvel. "I think that ‘Legion’ in particular redefines [the genre] in new ways as well. What we get asked a lot is are there too many superhero shows? Is there going to be a place where we reach saturation? There are two responses, which is do we ask those questions about cop shows and medical shows and legal shows? And generally no. But secondly, the other idea is that Marvel doesn’t ever start out from a place of ‘This is a person who is defined by their powers.”
Creator and showrunner Noah Hawley, who continues to do excellent work on Fargo, another FX series, emphasised the show's lack of genre attachment. “The first thought that I had in looking at the genre was, well, if we remove the genre, is there a compelling show that you would want to watch there?' I think that the underlying show, whatever the genre is, has to be a compelling character story. That’s what attracted me to it.”
The series premieres on February 8.
Source: Variety
