Noah Hawley and the Powers That Be over at FX know a thing or two about dabbling with an established property, so it’s small wonder that the pair’s new collaboration for X-Men spinoff series Legion has garnered so much buzz given the runaway success of Fargo. But delving headfirst into the world of mutants proved to be a different proposition altogether.
We’ve been introduced to Dan Stevens’ lead mutant in previous trailers, which teased a world that will seemingly go on to dovetail with future X-Men movies – movies that will no doubt begin rolling out of 20th Century Fox once the dust settles from Bryan Singer’s Apocalypse.
Speaking with IGN, Hawley revealed that he relished the opportunity to be placed in a world “that’s by definition surreal,” before noting that his creative approach to Legion is actually fairly similar to how he handled the early seasons of Fargo.
My approach to the Legion material is similar (to Fargo), which is it’s about a respect for the world, but it’s not about telling stories in that world that the reader is familiar with. It’s about taking that character and really exploring, almost on an existential level, what it’s like…So, I would be remiss, I feel like, if I didn’t deconstruct this, if I didn’t really try to do something for the genre that feels personal and interesting to me and to really explore if you have a character who for his whole life has believed that he’s schizophrenic, and is now starting to think that he may have these powers, but he doesn’t know and he doesn’t know what’s real – well, that’s the experience the audience should have.
Before headlining Disney’s live-action Beauty and the Beast with Emma Watson, Stevens will be set among a roster of freaks and geeks that comprises Rachel Keller (Fargo), Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation) and Jean Smart (Fargo).
Legion is expected to make its long-anticipated premiere via FX at some point in 2017. It won’t be the only supernatural property to do so either, with American Gods taking up residence over at Starz.