Not long ago, Fox dropped some X-Men news that’s sure to excite fans: two new X-Men shows are in development. Legion is in the works for FX, led by Fargo creator Noah Hawley. Hellfire is being developed for basic cable at Fox, led by Evan Katz and Manny Coto , formerly of 24. Both series have former alumni from the X-Men movies in producer roles, including Bryan Singer, Lauren Shuler Donner, Simon Kinberg, Jim Chory and Jeph Loeb. Chory specifically works as a producer on Daredevil, and that already bodes well for these live action TV adaptions. While Marvel superheroes have many animated TV adaptions, live action adaptions on the small screen are few and far between.
Legion will be about the mutant of the same name, who’s the son of Charles Xavier in the comics. The pilot’s already in development, and here’s the released logline from FX:
“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.”
Hellfire, meanwhile, looks like it’s going to head back to the ’60s to give us all X-Men: First Class flashbacks. Here’s the released loglinge from Fox:
“Fox’s “Hellfire” is set in the late 1960s and follows a young special agent who learns that a power-hungry woman with extraordinary abilities is working with a clandestine society of millionaires, known as “The Hellfire Club,” to take over the world.”
As both series enter development, here’s our list of 5 things we’d like to see:
5. Cameos
One of the great tragedies of X-Men: Days of Future Past is that were so many different characters in the X-Men universe that several had to get cut out. Most notably in that movie’s case, it was Rogue, but a TV series has something a movie doesn’t: time. A full series can have plenty of room for cameos from all across the X-Men universe, though of course we’d most like see some big names drop by (Please, Ian Mckellan and Patrick Stewart?).
4. New Characters
There’s plenty of X-Men waiting for their first live action adaption, and plenty of other characters waiting for their second shot after a lackluster first outing. Both Hellfire and Legion will let us get to know far more mutants than ever before, and maybe even gives us some creative new ones.
3. More Origin Stories
The beauty of First Class and Days of Future Past is that we get to see how far back the X-Men go. There’s nothing better than seeing a young Professor X or a young Magneto. With Hellfire taking place in the ’60s, there’s now more time to explore other character’s origins to see what makes them tick in the future.
