UPDATE: Fox has handed the mutant series a "put pilot" order, making the decision official based on Matt Nix's most recent draft of the script, and now casting can begin in earnest.
The mutant gene has been pretty wide-spread on the big screen, and now it's looking to expand its sphere of influence to the small. Not only has FX got Legion, but, according to Deadline, Fox is preparing to green light another TV pilot set in the X-Men universe, which is to be produced by Bryan Singer, Lauren Shuler Donner, Simon Kinberg, Jeph Loeb and Jim Chory.
Developed for television by Matt Nix, creator of Burn Notice, the site describes the potential untitled series as being about "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."
Previously, the X-Men, and intolerance towards mutants, was viewed as an analogy to gays, but as of late it seems to have taken on the anti-immigrant sentiment that has become more prevalent by many.
While Nix couldn't say much about the new show at TCA, he did relate that the series would connect to the big screen X-Men films. "A fan of the movies," he explained, "particularly the movies but also the comic books, would not be disoriented at all as to where this fits in the mythology. I guess I'd say that if you look at the movies, which started in 2000 and run to now, they don't all line up perfectly. So I'm not slavishly fitting myself into a particular slot, but at the same time, if you like that world, if you like the world of the movies, there are definite nods to it. It definitely exists in the same general kind of universe, if that makes sense."
Elsewhere on the mutant front, Noah Hawley, creator of Legion (which debuts 8 February), has made it pretty clear in an interview with Entertainment Weekly that the show will not be crossing over with any other films or series any time soon, as Legion needs to "stand on its own two feet."
In terms of what's driving him creatively, Hawley says it's the genre's sense of inventiveness and wonder. As an example, he points to the 2003 remake of Battlestar Galactica, "where the Cylons were driven by a belief in God — that was a profoundly eye-opening idea and allowed that show to look at religion in a completely different way. There's an inventiveness when you can use the genre elements to heighten certain themes of character crisis." On Legion, there will be plenty of that to go around.