Pink Floyd is woven into the very fabric of the upcoming FX/Marvel series Legion. When show creator and executive producer Noah Hawley met with composer Jeff Russo, he remembers saying that he wanted the show to sound like Dark Side of the Moon, the rock band’s seminal 1973 album. Another slick tribute? Naming a character Syd Barrett, after the late founding member of the band.
Dan Stevens and Aubrey Plaza in Legion. Courtesy: Marvel Entertainment.
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The cast and crew discuss the FX series at New York Comic Con.
Pink Floyd is woven into the very fabric of the upcoming FX/Marvel series Legion. When show creator and executive producer Noah Hawley met with composer Jeff Russo, he remembers saying that he wanted the show to sound like Dark Side of the Moon, the rock band’s seminal 1973 album. Another slick tribute? Naming a character Syd Barrett, after the late founding member of the band.
“That album more than anything is really the soundscape of mental illness to some degree,“ Hawley told a packed audience during a panel for the show at New York Comic Con. FX was there to show the first half hour of the series, which already looks like a thrilling take on the famous X-Men antihero.
Legion tells the story of David Charles Haller (played by a winning Dan Stevens), the son of powerful mutant Professor X. Tormented by the sounds of voices in his head, Haller is diagnosed with schizophrenia and placed in a mental hospital. However, those voices are actually a mark of his mutant abilities — he just might be one of the most powerful mutants of all time. The show also stars Aubrey Plaza, Rachel Keller, Jeremie Harris, Katie Aselton, Amber Midthunder, and Bill Irwin.
Stevens loves playing the “truly insane character,” he told the crowd, adding it’s the “most comfortable costume I’ve ever had in life.”
“No dumb horns . . . sorry, I have to tease Tom Hiddleston,” he joked, a nod to Hiddleston’s Thor character Loki.
During the Q&A portion, a fan asked if the Professor X connection would be teased out over the course of the show. “I don’t think you can really tell the story without that element to it,” Hawley said. “There’s a wheelchair in the first scene.”
Considering the breadth of the X-Men universe, another fan asked if the show would ever feature guest stars from the films, a question that inspired some conspiratorial responses.
“Probably not. But you never know,” said executive producer Lauren Shuler Donner.
“Wouldn’t that be great?” Marvel TV chief Jeff Loeb added. Earlier in the panel, he also coyly assured a fan that the Legion universe would connect to other Marvel projects. “The fact that I’m sitting here is an indication of bridges that are being made.”
“We gotta earn the right to be part of that universe,” Hawley said in response to the guest star question. “My hope is to create something that is so strong that the people at the movie studio call up and go, ‘We’d be foolish not to connect these two things.’”
“We all know the reality of the expense of that, and a lot of corporations would have a lot of agendas,” he continued. “All we can do is make the best show possible.”
Courtesy: Vanity Fair
