Last week, Fox and Marvel surprised everyone with news that a deal had been reached to allow Fox to produce two X-Men-related TV shows: Legion on FX and Hellfire on Fox. And while that deal didn’t lead the Fantastic Four back to Marvel (as heavily rumored, and later debunked), it did lay out some intriguing possibilities to expand the X-Men film universe into television.

Fargo showrunner and executive producer Noah Hawley is shepherding Legion, which is based upon the character David Haller, a powerful mutant whose multiple personalities each have their own mutant ability while fighting for control of his mind. But the character of Legion isn’t an obvious choice to build a TV series around.

In a new interview with TV Insider, Hawley explained why he chose to create a television show based on Haller’s story. “What I really like about him is, here’s a character who is schizophrenic on some level, a character struggling with mental illness,” said Hawley. “Is he crazy or does he have these powers? The answer is, kind of both…I’m a big believer that the structure of a story should reflect the content of the story. And so I liked the idea that if you have a character that doesn’t know what’s real and what’s not real, that is also the audience’s journey.”

While Haller is Charles Xavier’s son in Marvel’s comic book universe, Hawley appeared to downplay that family angle while characterizing Legion as a standalone project.

“[Legion is] conceived more as a standalone,” related Hawley. “I don’t want to say too much more about it on that level, but certainly it’s not constructed as a back-door anything. It’s more just that there’s a story that I want to explore that has to fit into that larger universe, which is exciting.”

Hawley added that “the plan is to start shooting Legion by the end of January or early February. And then hopefully we’ve made something great and we can shoot the rest of the year and go from there.”

X-Men fans, who would you cast as Legion in the TV series? Check the Mutant Registration Act and share your thoughts in the comments section below!

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HT: TV Insider
Image Credit: Marvel Comics