IGN - Legion at NYCC 2016

Legion Press | New York Comic Con 2016

**NYCC 2016: Legion Brings the X-Men World to TV / NYCC 2016: Legion Represents Marvel and Fox Building a Bridge**

October 9-10, 2016

Article by Scott Collura

Part 1: View on IGN | Archived Copy

Part 2: View on IGN | Archived Copy

## Transcript

### Part 1

The Marvel-inspired TV series unleashes its mutant powers on Comic-Con with 20 minutes of footage.

FX Networks brought its upcoming Marvel and X-Men-inspired TV series Legion to New York Comic-Con today, complete with the world debut of the first 20 minutes of the pilot and a cast/creator Q&A.

Legion stars Dan Stevens as David Haller, described by FX as “a troubled young man who may be more than human” -- in other words, he’s a mutant. The series’ showrunner Noah Hawley has already had great success on FX with Fargo, and so this adaptation of the X-Men character has big shoes to fill… but judging by what was shown today, it is more than ready to do just that.Stevens and Hawley took the stage along with castmembers Aubrey Plaza (Lenny Busker), Rachel Keller (Syd Barrett), Bill Irwin (Cary Loudermilk), Katie Aselton (Amy Haller), Amber Midthunder (Kerry Loudermilk), and Jeremie Harris (Ptonomy Wallace) along with head of Marvel TV/executive-producer Jeph Loeb and executive-producer Lauren Shuler Donner.

The first 20 minutes of the pilot offered up a feature-quality version of a comic-book TV show, but one that casual viewers might not even know is about a super-powered character. The episode starts with a shot of a baby -- David -- and then progresses to images of him as he ages, with things getting increasingly disturbing and trippy as he reaches adolescence and his world seemingly caves in around him due to his psychic powers and/or mental illness.

Much of the episode is spent in a mental hospital, and the show is shot to look, according to Hawley, “like a 1964 Terence Stamp movie.” I’m not quite sure what that means other than the show having a simultaneously timeless yet futuristic feel. In the asylum, David meets the beautiful and troubled Syd Barrett (Keller), who becomes his “girlfriend” even though she refuses to let them touch each other (they hold hands by each grasping the end of a cloth). It’s all very charming and sweet and weird, but soon time seems to jump ahead five years and David, now out of the asylum, is being investigated regarding the girl’s death. Did he kill her? Did she really die? Is any of this real? Stay tuned.

Hawley depicts the events of the show from David’s point of view, meaning the audience can’t tell what’s real or not as the thoughts and images of everyone around him pour in. He may be sitting talking to his doctor alone in a room, for example, but only he (and we) can see a strange figure in the background giggling. It’s freaky and really effective, and Hawley said one of the appeals of Legion was making it subjective -- you’re in his mind and world, so you don’t know what’s real or not.

“The X-Men was my book growing up,” said Hawley. “And I had this opportunity after the first year of Fargo. I heard … that maybe there was a TV play to be made in this world. … For me I had to understand what the show was and it had to be a strong character journey. I almost started without a character in mind [and] found my way to David’s character.”Keller’s character name was inspired by the former Pink Floyd member Syd Barrett, and in fact the trippiness of the show is in part because Hawley wanted Legion to be like a TV version of the album Dark Side of the Moon. That’s a great representation of mental illness, he said.

Legion is also notable for being the first joint live-action production between Marvel and Fox since Marvel Studios hit the ground running eight years ago. Shuler Donner, who produces the X-Men movies, said she wanted something very different when making the jump to TV.

“This was exactly what I wanted because it is far away from the X-Men movies and yet it still lives within that universe,” she said. “The only way for the X-Men to continue forward is to be original and surprising, and this is really surprising and different.”

There were several questions about what universe Legion takes place in, actually, and it doesn’t seem to be as clear cut as just saying it’s directly tied into the movie X-Men.

That’s to be determined, according to Hawley, particularly since David’s perception of reality is unreliable. “I will say that we are true to this character’s origin,” he added, when asked if David’s father from the comics -- Professor Xavier -- will come into play. “I don’t think you can tell the story without that element.”

Stevens added with a shrug, “There is a wheelchair in the opening scene!”

Legion will debut on FX in 2017.

### Part 2

Jeph Loeb on Marvel and Fox's first collaboration and if it truly ALL could be connected eventually.

Besides being the first Marvel-based series made for FX -- and boasting the notable pedigree of coming from Fargo creator Noah Hawley -- the upcoming Legion also represents the first true collaboration between Fox and Marvel, who are producing the series together. A look at the executive producer credits alone lets you know Marvel TV's Jeph Loeb and Jim Chory are working alongside longtime X-Men series producers Lauren Shuler Donner, Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg, something that seemed unlikely to ever happen a couple of years ago.

The X-Men film rights of course have been at Fox for decades, hence the lack of any X-Men characters -- except for the unique exception of Quicksilver, whose rights are shared by both Fox and Marvel, as are Scarlet Witch's -- appearing in any part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in film or TV. Legion is not set in the MCU, though its ties to the X-Men films are still uncertain. But during the panel for the series at New York Comic Con, a fan, evoking Loeb's familiar "It's all connected!" refrain for the MCU and their TV shows, asked about the possibility of a bigger connection back to the other Marvel projects.

Loeb, who was on the panel with Shuler Donner, Hawley and the show's cast, replied, "This one is particularly complicated, as I’ve tried to explain. It isn’t because the Marvel Universe isn’t connected, because it is. In this particular case, I think this audience is sophisticated enough to know that the X-Men characters live in the Fox world and Marvel [movies and shows] live in a different world. Obviously the fact that I’m sitting here is an indication of bridges that are being made."Loeb added, "People like Lauren [Shuler Donner] are facilitating that and making that happen, and John Landgraf, who’s the head of FX, who’s very involved [in Legion]."

Loeb said he couldn't promise anything in terms of bigger MCU/X-Men universe connections occurring right now, joking that if he indicated it could happen and then it didn't, he'd be called out on it at his next convention appearance.

In the meantime though, he said, essentially, that Legion is still spiritually connected to the MCU, remarking, "Marvel heroes at their core are people who are damaged, are people that are trying to figure out who they are in life. And that doesn’t matter whether or not they’re X-Men characters or they’re Matt Murdock or they’re Tony Stark or they’re Peter Parker... That’s where it starts. We’re much more interested in the person that’s inside the mask as opposed to the mask or the cape. So if you start at a place as strong as David Haller’s character and you have a storyteller like Noah [Hawley], then that’s Marvel and in that way it is all connected. Because you guys at the end of the day know what it is more than anybody else. So we just want something that has truth to it. So if what you just watched feels like Marvel, then it is all connected and that’s really what matters."