Fox close to ordering pilot for untitled X-MEN TV drama.

Fox developing X-MEN TV drama is nearing the greenlight for a pilot order.

Showrunner and executive producer Matt Nix (Burn Notice) spoke a bit about the hopeful show while attending the Television Critics Association press tour.

Currently untitled, the series is planned to focus on two regular parents who find out their teenage children are powerful mutants. Forced to go on the run from a hostile government, the family finds themselves joining an underground network of mutants (possibly the Morlocks?) and must fight to survive the threats that come their way.

X-Men film producers Lauren Shuler Donner, Bryan Singer and Simon Kinberg will also executive producer, along with Marvel TV’s Jeph Loeb and Jim Chory.

“Fingers crossed, we get everything together and it enters the cycle for this year’s pilots,” said Nix. Sources at The Hollywood Reporter say that Fox could sign off on the pilot in as little as a couple weeks.

This show won’t be connected to FX’s X-Men drama LEGION, which is being made by Noah Hawley (Fargo). “Welcome to crazy-town!” he said of his sneak peak at the show. It’s an awesome show. When I was working on [this] I thought, ‘I really need to see Legion to make sure that I don’t step on anything they’re doing.’ Then I saw it and was, like, ‘There’s no chance I’m stepping on anything they’re doing.’ It’s a great show, but it’s more cable-licious. It’s a very different world.”

Nix confirms that while ‘Legion’ is its own thing, his Fox show will be connected to the film franchise: “A fan of the movies but also the comics would not be disoriented at all as to where this fits in the mythology. If you look at the movies, which take place from — they started in 2003 to now — they don’t all line up perfectly. I’m not slavishly fitting them 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.”

Asked if there will be direct connections shows between TV and film, Nix said “close, but not exactly. In a general way, it acknowledges that events like the events that have happened in movies have happened. But it’s not up to date. It’s still evolving, so we’ll see how much that comes in. It’s certainly, ‘Since this happened in X-Men: Apocalypse, all of these things are happening,’ which I think is cool, but they’ve already done that.”

Very cool!

If signed-off on, the show is planned to be “heavily serialized” with a “coherent story” and no filler – around 10 to 13 episodes.

Will we see characters from the films transition to the small screen? “[I get to invent] some,” he said. “It’s designed to sidestep questions like, ‘Where is Wolverine?’ You have to answer those questions,” he said. “I didn’t want to do anything where it’s like, ‘Wolverine is just off-screen.’ It exists in a world where those questions are answered without needing to name a lot of names or spend a lot of time dwelling on that issue. 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. When I was pitching the show, I pitched some characters that appear nowhere in the mythology but the guys from Marvel, when I started describing them, all gave each other knowing nods where [they understood what I was doing].”

Like Star Wars mythology, Nix said that we wants to respect the overall X-Men universe

“I didn’t want to get into the realm of too much like, ‘Yep! New X-Men, here we go!’ Because with something like this, there’s a little bit of fan service,” he said. “I’ve been really impressed with how a lot of people have talked about the Star Wars franchise and how when you do that, there’s a sense of respect. You don’t want to be slavishly doing the same thing over and over again that everybody else has done but at the same time, I owe something to my 10-year-old self right now and I need to respect that and I need for that kid who is obsessively reading comic books, I need there to be something rewarding, where they don’t feel that they wasted their time and they know what this is.”

Source: The Hollywood Reporter