FOX is officially expanding their superhero lineup and getting into the X-Men business. The network that is home to the reinvented DC-verse of Gotham is crossing the aisle to Marvel's mutants with a put pilot order for their untitled X-Men spinoff series. Burn Notice creator Matt Nix, who will executive produce alongside will executive produce alongside the cinematic X-Men team, Bryan Singer, Simon Kinberg, and Lauren Schuler Donner, as well as Marvel TV’s Jeph Loeb and Jim Chory.
The untitled series will focus on two ordinary parents who discover their children possess mutant powers. Forced to go on the run from a hostile government, the family joins up with an underground network of mutants and must fight to survive. Donner told reporters at the TCA winter press tour that, unlike Noah Hawley's self-contained, mind-bending mutant drama Legion, Nix's series will fit in the world built by the cinematic universe.
Per Donner,
“Matt’s is much more a part of just the world in terms of there are mutants, mutants are hated and there are Sentinels — though very different from what we’ve seen before. You feel like you’re here in the X-Men world. With Legion, we’re our own universe. It gives Noah the freedom to do what he wants to do. Because we play with so many different timelines, and we rebooted and not really rebooted and all that, we felt like, OK, we’re going to throw it out there and hope the fans accept it.”
Nix echoed those sentiments, suggesting his series will not only have nods to the events of the films, but is designed to answer questions about how the fan-favorite mutants factor in,
It's sort of designed to side-step questions like ‘Where is Wolverine?’ So you sort of have to answer those questions, and I didn’t want to do anything like ‘Wolverine is just offscreen!’ You know what I mean. So it exists in a world where those questions are answered without needing to name a lot of names or spend time dwelling on that issue.”
Nix is currently working with FOX as showrunner on the soon-to-premiere APB. There is no timeline yet for the X-Men series.
