After starring in a number of cartoons over the years, a live-action version of X-Men is coming to TV. FOX has officially ordered a pilot for a new television series that will be set in the same cinematic universe as the X-Men movies.
The action-adventure drama is said to focus on a pair of human parents who discover their children are mutants. With the government hostile against mutant kind, the family goes on the run and links up with an underground network of mutants fighting for survival.
Writer and executive producer Matt Nix (Burn Notice, APB), who is set to become showrunner should the series get picked up, told The Hollywood Reporter that the series will showcase new and recognizable mutants without force-feeding fans Wolverine cameos. “I didn’t want to do anything where it’s like, ‘Wolverine is just off-screen,'” he explained. “Within that, there are a certain amount of [familiar] characters that I can use and am using and then other characters I’m inventing — but everything is invented with a nod toward the existing mythology.”
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Nix’s fellow executive producer, X-Men franchise veteran Lauren Shuler Donner, told IGN that some familiar villains will also appear. “… There are Sentinels,” she said, “though very different from what we’ve seen before.”
In addition to featuring a few well-known X-Men, the untitled series will connect to the events of the films, if only loosely. “In a general way, it acknowledges that events like the events that have happened in movies have happened,” Nix said. “But it’s not up to date. It’s still evolving, so we’ll see how much that comes in.” He added, “I’m not slavishly fitting [the episodes] into a particular slot. But at the same time, if you like the world of the movies, there are definite nods to the movies. It exists in the same general universe.”
Executive producing alongside Nix and Donner will be Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg, as well as Marvel’s Jeph Loeb and Jim Chory. Update 12:00 PM CT: It’s now been revealed that Singer will also direct the pilot episode. Singer launched the modern era of superhero entertainment with 2000’s X-Men, and has since directed four of the six films in the franchise’s central series.
The pilot order is another win for fans of mutants on TV, as they’ll get to see FX’s Legion premiere on February 8th. Coming from Fargo boss Noah Hawley, that series will not be tied into the rest of the X-Men Universe.
