Dan Stevens, Aubrey Plaza and more join Marvel’s Legion TV series

Dan Stevens and Aubrey Plaza

by James White |
Published on

He was such a dangerous badass in The Guest that we can hardly imagine giving Empire Spirit Animal Dan Stevens actual superpowers would result in anything less than total chaos. But Marvel has chosen him to star in the pilot for Legion alongside Aubrey Plaza, Jean Smart and Rachel Keller.

Legion, adapted from the Marvel comic character first introduced in _New Mutant_s in 1985, focuses on David Haller. Long dealing with mental illness, he’s been in and out of psychiatric hospitals for years until a strange encounter with another patient leads him to think that maybe the voices and strange visions he experiences might be more real than he or anyone else thought. Stevens is starring as the troubled central character with Plaza as Lenny, his friend who battles drug and alcohol addiction but nevertheless keeps an optimistic frame of mind.

Smart is Melanie, a therapist who oversees David's treatment, and describe as nurturing but demanding. Finally there's Keller, seen recently in Fargo's second season, who plays Syd, a spiky woman with a soft core who still believes in happily ever after.

Noah Hawley, the man behind that storming Fargo TV adaptation, wrote the pilot and is producing the show alongside X-Men regulars Bryan Singer, Lauren Shuler Donner, Simon Kinberg and members of Team Marve. Shooting on the pilot is scheduled for March, and it's up as a potential series at US cable channel FX. If successful, it may hit Stateside screens later this year.

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