Bryan Singer has all but wound down the X-Men universe on the silver screen for the time being, and Apocalypse‘s relatively soft $80 million opening weekend has cooled talks of those character-driven spinoffs. But those in need of a mutant fix can turn their attention to TV, now that FX has handed out an eight-episode season order to Noah Hawley’s Legion.
Buoyed by the showrunner’s award-winning success with Fargo, news of Legion securing a season order at the network isn’t all that surprising, which aligns the X-Men offshoot with a premiere in the early stages of 2017. There’s also our first peek at Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, Beauty and the Beast) as the show’s “Omega-level mutant.”
It’s a mutant that goes by the name of David Haller, a capricious lead and son to Professor Charles Xavier, who 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.”
Nick Grad, President of Original Programming at FX, released the following statement, comparing Hawley’s breakthrough with Legion to the creator’s lauded work on Fargo.
“We’ve come to expect excellence from Noah Hawley and with ‘Legion’ he has delivered another major creative achievement. Just as he did in reimagining ‘Fargo,’ he is bringing an entirely new aesthetic and sensibility to the enormously popular and richly represented X-Men world. The pilot episode is stunning, driven by incredible performances from Dan Stevens, Aubrey Plaza, Jean Smart, Rachel Keller and the rest of the cast. We join our producing partners at Marvel in congratulating the creative team for what they’ve accomplished and are as excited as the fans for the premiere of ‘Legion’s first season.”
Also starring Aubrey Plaza, Jean Smart, Rachel Keller, Legion is expected to enter production over the summer in Vancouver, Canada ahead of a premiere in 2017. Until then, you can have a gander at the full image of Stevens in action, below.
