We recently learned that 20th Century Fox and Marvel Television were working together on a couple of series to air on FX, the potential being that if one or all of the pilots strike gold Fox would have their own wave of successful Marvel shows.
One of those purposed series was one titled Legion and would focus on David Haller, the mentally ill son of Professor Charles Xavier. Deadline has learned our first casting hire for the project with Fargo actress Rachel Keller.
Legion introduces the story of David Haller, based on the Marvel comics character Legion, the son of X-Men founder Charles Xavier. Since he was a teenager, David has struggled with mental illness. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, David 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. Keller will play the female lead, a scrappy, optimistic woman in her 20s. Details about her potential powers are unclear. There has been chatter about them possibly being tied to human touch, drawing parallels to such X-Men universe characters as Rogue and Spyke.
Her character details are being kept under-wraps, we do suspect that the shows could be creating original or borrow obscure characters for their lineups. Although, they do suggest her powers are similar to Spyke and Rogue, make of that as you will as Deadline isn’t very versed in comic book lore. I don’t think Rogue would be rebooted for a series that might not even make it to air, but never say never.
The collaboration between X-Men producers Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, Lauren Shuler Donner, and Jeph Loeb‘s production team at Marvel Television should be an interesting experiment to say the least. Loeb’s trackrecord over at Netflix should give fans confidence that these shows could be very well made. Even more so, that airing on FX allows them to go much darker/mature with the episodes like they have with Daredevil and Jessica Jones. While Fox is handling the production side of things, you’d have to assume that Loeb would have a lot of involvement here to have the Marvel Television brand attached to it.
I’m curious to see how their other X-Men series Hellfire based on the infamous/villainous Hellfire Club will look like as well.
I do believe if these projects do work out, this might build-up that awful relationship between Fox and Marvel that’s held back the X-Men and Avengers crossovers we’ve all been dying to see happen.
SOURCE: DEADLINE