Before the show had even filmed its pilot episode, Legion creator Noah Hawley was already cooling fan expectations about the show’s overall connection to the X-Men film series, saying it was conceived as a more standalone piece.
Speaking at the Edinburgh Television Festival (via THR), franchise director Bryan Singer echoed this sentiment, calling it “part of the X-Men universe, but when you watched it, you wouldn’t have to label it, it could exist completely on its own.”
Singer went on, however, and said Legion and another planned X-Men TV series (announced back in July) “will relate to future X-Men movies” with a “really ambitious and fun and very unique storyline.”
Currently the only announced X-Men films include the upcoming Wolverine 3, Deadpool 2, and The New Mutants, so it remains to be seen if the relation between the television shows will be for these films or a currently-unannounced project. The other X-Men TV series is in development at FOX and will be written by Matt Nix (Burn Notice, FOX’s upcoming APB), focusing on two ordinary parents who discover their children possess mutant powers. Forced to go on the run from a hostile government, the family joins up with an underground network of mutants and must fight to survive.
Legion introduces the story of David Haller: 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. Dan Stevens (The Guest), Rachel Keller (Fargo), Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation) and Jean Smart (Fargo) star in the series that is set to premiere on FX in 2017.
