Legion TV Series: Dan Stevens cast as the lead in the upcoming Marvel show.
He delighted in his movie outing The Guest, and on the long-running British TV show Downton Abbey, but now it looks like Dan Stevens is heading to the world of Marvel after being cast in the Legion TV series.
The Legion TV series will be a spin-off from the X-Men comics, and will produced by Fargo showrunner Noah Hawley. Aubrey Plaza and Jean Smart have also joined the cast with Rachel Keller, and shooting is expected to begin next month.
The Hollywood Reporter reports the Legion TV series casting news, and adds a little detail behind the character that Stevens will play.
David Haller, a man who may be more than human and who has struggled with mental illness since his teenage years. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, David has been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years. But after a strange encounter with a fellow patient, he is confronted with the possibility that the voices he hears and the visions he sees might be real.
The trade adds that, in the comics, David is the son of X-Men founder Charles Xavier (aka Professor X – played by Patrick Stewart and James McAvoy in the movies) and Israeli Holocaust survivor Gabrielle Haller. David first appeared in New Mutants No. 25 in March 1985. The show will not be connected to the current X-Men movies, of which the next film set for release is X-Men: Apocalypse which is set for release later this year.
Noah Hawley, Lauren Shuler Donner, Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, Jeph Loeb, Jim Chory and John Cameron will act as executive producers on the Legion TV series.
Stevens himself will be seen in Disney’s reimagining of Beauty and the Beast with him playing Beast to Emma Watson’s Belle.
