The past few years have been big for comic books on the small screen. While comic book television is almost as old as television itself, it’s only been recently that it truly began to take off with Arrow on The CW and Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. on ABC; followed by a an entire shared universe of DC shows on The CW, Gotham on Fox, the Defenders shows on Netflix, and a handful of other now-cancelled series (see Constantine).
While X-Men had one of the most popular animated comic book TV shows ever, it hasn’t gotten in on the live-action TV shows yet. That will soon be rectified with Legion on FX (debuting in February), and a newly greenlit X-Men TV show that’s been ordered to series on Fox. While Legion isn’t set to have any overt connection to the X-Men cinematic universe (at least initially), Fox’s X-Men series is a different story entirely.
A new report by The Wrap suggests the X-Men TV show/movie connections will start strong, since Bryan Singer is directing the pilot episode. Singer wrote and/or directed four of the movies in the X-Men franchise to date, basically serving as the architect and guiding force behind much of the story and world-building seen on the big screen. As such, having him kick off the X-Men TV series could be a clear message of intent from Fox, when it comes to where the TV show fits in the grand scheme of X-Men related things.
Singer’s involvement isn’t limited to directing; he’ll also be listed as an Executive Producer, and no doubt he’ll participate in writing as well. This approach to launching a show with cinematic ties is surprisingly similar to Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., which saw Joss Whedon write and direct the pilot episode as well, fresh off directing the first Avengers movie.
While this new series will be set in the same world originally created by Singer, it’s not clear how pervasive the crossovers will be. There will be Sentinels, but that’s really all that’s known at this point. Obviously, having A-list actors from the X-Men movies show up seems doubtful, so the series likely won’t ever feature Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. However, based on the show’s synopsis of two non-mutant parents trying to hide their mutant children from the government, it doesn’t sound like the events of the X-Men movies and show will organically coincide very often anyway.
The X-Men movie franchise is about to complete its third trilogy (the Wolverine trilogy) with Logan - the first two trilogies being the original timeline and the First Class trilogy. In those nine movies, the story has stuck to a fairly narrow group of characters. Since the X-Men comic book universe has a bounty of characters that haven’t yet - and probably never will - appear on the big screen, the TV show could be a great way to capitalize on those characters.
With the big screen X-Men films about to head off in a new direction with New Mutants, there could be a lot of room to explore the more “normal” side of this universe and see what it’s like for mutant families that haven’t enrolled at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters - or enlisted in Charles Xavier’s team of superheroes. We’ll bring you more details on the X-Men TV show as they become available.
Source: The Wrap
