Noah Hawley Gives New Details on his 'Legion' X-Men TV Spin-Off
FX is joining the superhero fray with its X-Men spin-off, Legion, which has been in the pipeline for some time now. Creator behind the Fargo TV adaptation, Noah Hawley has been developing the series, set to tie in with Sony's X-Men universe, but it will definitely standalone.
Recent news has Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) in the lead role alongside Aubrey Plaza and Jean Smart. Without a series commitment by FX, Hawley may well be able to bring a new experimental take on the comic book property, particularly follow recent new bold shows premiering on TV.
Via Vanity Fair, Hawley has revealed that the series will explore Legion's mental illness and dissociation identity disorder. This disorder leads to each persona controlling a different superpower.
“I always feel like the structure of a story should reflect the content of the story. If the story, as in this case, is about a guy who is either schizophrenic or he has these abilities, i.e., he doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not real, then the audience should have the same experience.” Hawley says he’s aiming for a “more existential exploration” and “surreal or dreamlike quality where it’s not just about running and kicking. There’s, whatever, 9,000 superhero stories right now.
"They’ve got all the running and kicking covered. I think my goal with this is to do something whimsical and imaginative and unexpected. Not just because I want to do something different, but because it feels like the right way to tell this story.
“What is it really like to hear voices or to be able to move things with your mind or to think you can move things with your mind, but you’ve been hospitalized and they’ve been talking you out of the idea that you can actually move things with your mind. If there’s one thing that television doesn’t really do, and has never really done, is to tell a surreal story.”
“I would have loved to have been in the room with the ABC executives when they watched David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive TV pilot. You know that had to be a long silence after that thing stopped.”
2017 is a likely arrival for the series.
Source: Collider
