Some very exciting X-Men universe news today, as FX’s TV series Legion has found its first star.
Deadline reports that Fargo star Rachel Keller has signed on to play the as-yet unnamed female lead in the new series from her Fargo creator Noah Hawley.
Legion will tell “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.”
Word on the series is that it will be relatively standalone without too many connections to the cinematic universe. The other X-Men universe TV, Hellfire, will air on Fox.
The details about Keller’s character are simply “a scrappy, optimistic woman in her 20s.” Rumours have compared her powers to those of Spyke and Rogue, but we’ll have to wait and see.
Hawley wrote the pilot, which is most excellent news given how brilliant Fargo is (seriously, that second season. Wow.), and will act as executive producer alongside Bryan Singer, Lauren Schuler Donner, Simon Kinberg and the Marvel TV group.
Keller was excellent in Fargo‘s second season as the duplicitous Simone Gerhardt and Deadline says that she “impressed Hawley and FX brass who moved on to cast her in her first leading role.”
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