The X-Men movie series is now nine films strong, and is now going to introduce its first television component with the new FX series Legion.  Created by Noah Hawley–best known for his work on Fargo–the new series is about a young man named David Haller, a mutant diagnosed with schizophrenia, who has struggled with mental illness since he was a teenager. According to the official series description, everything changes when he meets the girl of his dreams—a fellow patient—and is confronted with the possibility that the voices he hears and the visions he sees might be real. Haller is being played by former Downton Abbey star Dan Stevens.
Now, in the Marvel comics, David Haller’s mental illness results in multiple personalities, each with a different mutation. He’s also the son of Professor Charles Xavier, a result of an affair years prior with a woman in Israel, a fact that wasn’t revealed to either David or Charles until adulthood. How much of the series will stick to the comics is unknown, as the X-Men movies diverge more wildly from the comics than their Marvel Cinematic Universe counterparts do, but seeing as they are stressing this is an X-Men spin-off, it seems the family connection to Xavier will come up at some point.
Now creator Noah Hawley has revealed another sneak peek of the show to fans on his Instagram. The picture was taken during a sound mixing session, and shows Dan Stevens as David Haller in what looks like mental institution clothing. It also confirms that the TV version will not be rocking the amazing hair of the comics character. You can check out the pic below…
X-Men film producer Simon Kinberg recently revealed details about the new series to Moviefone–via FlickeringMyth–stating that: “Noah [Hawley] is a genius–he wrote and created and directed the pilot to Legion–and it is a very different sensibility than anything we’ve done with the X-Men movies. Almost, I would say, as radically different as Deadpool was from the mainline X-Men movies. Legion is, again, in a different direction: really character-based, really granular in terms of getting inside the details of the characters. It stands as part of the X-Men universe, but it stands apart from it as well.â€
The eight-part first season of Legion is set to debut on FX early next year.
Are you excited about the first TV series set in the X-Men universe? Let us know your thoughts on Legion in the comments below.
Image: FX Networks
