The Alien franchise is finally getting fresh blood. It was announced today during the Disney Investor Day event that Fargo’s Noah Hawley will officially get to make his long-gestating Alien series at FX on Hulu and producer Ridley Scott is along for the ride. The new project will be set on Earth, but as Noah has suggested recently in interviews, he wants to explore the human side of the Alien franchise rather than just the xenomorphs, so don’t let the Earth scare you too much.

Continue reading ‘Alien’: Noah Hawley and Ridley Scott Team For Original Series Set On Earth For FX on Hulu at The Playlist.

HOLLYWOOD – Noah Hawley is a talent. Whether you were wowed by any of the first three installments of FX’s “Fargo” or his often brilliant three season run of “Legion,” it’s easy to see how creative and daring a content creator he is.  Hawley has now jumped to the big screen for his directorial feature debut, “Lucy in the Sky,” which was a late addition to the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival last month.  

Continue reading Noah Hawley Thinks He Took On Too Much At One Time But We’re Not So Sure [Interview] at The Playlist.

Noah Hawley is one of the more interesting filmmakers working today. After breaking through with his incredible FX series “Fargo,” the writer-director-producer kept that streak going, but in a completely different genre — superheroes. “Legion” is based on an ‘X-Men’ character and is wrapping up its highly-acclaimed run this year. Largely, Hawley has succeeded by pushing the boundaries of the genre and medium and he feels that’s exactly the type of thing that could help Marvel Studios.

Continue reading Noah Hawley Wants Kevin Feige To Treat Him Like A “Marvel R&D Department” at The Playlist.

Since its premiere in 2017, Noah Hawley’s “Legion” has been something of a basic cable wonder. A very, very loose adaptation of the little known Marvel Comics character, the FX series has pushed the creative boundaries of the episodic medium in ways that would make even David Lynch gush. Hawley and his writing team have also been more than willing to make the title character, aka David (Dan Stevens), hard to root for at times.

Continue reading ‘Legion’ Season 3 Gloriously Pushes Creative Limits As David Finds A Time Traveler [Review] at The Playlist.

While June looks to be relatively tame in the film department, it’s bringing back some of television’s better binges in just one month. Meryl Streep will remind everyone why she’s so beloved in season two of “Big Little Lies,” “Pose” will encourage people to enjoy television communally as a show best experienced with others and there’s even room for the oddities such as “Baskets.”

READ MORE: The Best TV Shows & Mini-Series Of 2018 

The time of Peak TV means that there’s no strict timeline of when shows premiere and/or return, making for a wider, more interesting television template, offering up something for everyone at all times of the year.

Continue reading 10 Shows to Watch in June: ‘Big Little Lies,’ ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ & More at The Playlist.

When we talk about the Disney/Fox merger that finalized earlier this year, one of the large components of the deal is the fact that Disney now has all the rights to the Fox lineup of Marvel characters, including the X-Men. And in doing so, Disney now can get rid of all the various “X-Men” properties and reboot the whole damn thing. Thus, a show like “Legion,” which is a spin-off, but not anywhere close to the films you’ve probably seen, really just doesn’t have anywhere to go.

Continue reading ‘Legion’ Final Season Trailer: Time Travel, ‘Alice In Wonderland,’ & Cults? Yep, It’s Another Season Of Crazy at The Playlist.

Despite published reports, Oscars weekend does have an official host.  No, she won’t be appearing at the Dolby Theater on Sunday, but Aubrey Plaza is hosting the 2019 Film Independent Spirit Awards on Saturday.  And that makes her the de facto queen of the weekend and, as she proclaimed in our interview, the “last awards show host on earth.”

Plaza, admittedly, has a tough task ahead of her.  She’s following up John Mulaney and Nick Kroll who knocked it out of the park hosting the telecast the past two years.  

Continue reading Aubrey Plaza Is The Last Awards Show Host On Earth [Interview] at The Playlist.

Even though the series is based on a Marvel comic and a spin-off of the “X-Men” universe, to call FX’s “Legion” a superhero show is ridiculous. The series follows lead character David Haller, who is perhaps the most powerful mutant in the world but also highly unstable. And much like the character, the series itself is a bit unstable, challenging its viewers to follow along with each twist and turn.

Continue reading FX’s ‘Legion’ Casts Professor X As Series Is Set To End After Season 3 at The Playlist.

Comic-Con isn’t what it used to be. The annual San Diego-hosted hotspot for all things comic book-related was once the official house of all things proudly nerdy and gleefully geeky, but it hasn’t hosted the same reputation it once held. The lines are long. The heat can be unbearable. The walking is endless. The bathrooms are fleeting (and disgusting). And it’s sometimes hard to justify all the time and labor spent on the weeklong trip — especially when there’s a better-than-decent chance the footage or panels you are watching will soon be available (or, more likely, leaked) for anyone and everyone to watch online.

Continue reading Comic-Con 2018 Preview: ‘Aquaman,’ ‘Glass,’ ‘Deadpool 2’ & More at The Playlist.

The nominees for the 2018 Peabody Awards were announced this morning and a number of standout television series made the cut. FX’s “Legion,” Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” HBO’s “Insecure,” CBS’ “Star Trek: Discovery” and NBC’s “The Good Place” were all included in the Entertainment category while familiar award season docs “Stronger Island,” “Chasing Coral” and “City of Ghosts” also are up for honors in the Documentary category.

Continue reading ‘Legion,’ ‘Insecure’ And ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ Up For 2018 Peabody Awards at The Playlist.

Flowers are blooming, and the grass is turning green. You know what that means — April is here! And with the beginning of Spring upon us, it’s now time to clean out your DVR of those HGTV and Food Network shows to make room for the upcoming influx of prestige television. As you are well aware, we are in the Golden Age of TV, and April has traditionally been the time that networks bring out the big guns, and premiere shows that will no doubt be the topic of conversation for the months to come.

Continue reading 10 TV Shows to Watch in April at The Playlist.

The return of FX’s “Legion” is right around the corner, and they’ve just released a new video that promises this season will be ten times trippier than the last, if that’s possible.

In the “First Look” video, you get interviews with the cast and crew as they breakdown what happened at the very end of season 1, and what that means for the upcoming season. Basically, David was trapped in a sphere, he re-emerges some time later with jumbled memories that include a rooftop forest and dancing, while the rest of the world thinks, again, that he’s delusional.

Continue reading ‘Legion’ Season 2 First Look Promises An Experience That Will ‘Tickle’ Your Brain at The Playlist.

Let’s just cut through the BS and acknowledge reality. It’s not the government that controls us. It’s not money either. Personal success, happiness, love: none of those. It’s Marvel. Marvel owns us. And as long as they keep making “Legion,” then we’re okay with that.

FX and Marvel just released the first trailer for “Legion” season 2, and it looks just as crazy, scary, and beautiful as the first season. 

Continue reading ‘Legion’ Season 2 Trailer Is Here To Mess With Your Mind at The Playlist.

Now it’s time for TV. Back at the start of December, we ran down the 100 films that we’re most looking forward to across 2018, and we picked out some festival favorites that we’ve already seen and know are worth checking out too. But even with 250 hours worth or so of promising art and entertainment, that barely scratches the surface of what people will be talking about in terms of moving images, because, well, we don’t know if you heard, but TV’s gotten really good.

Continue reading The Most Anticipated TV Shows Of 2018 at The Playlist.

The American Society of Cinematographers announced the 2018 nominees for the ASC Awards. Like many guild honors it’s seen as a precursor for the equivalent category at the Academy Awards and this year that’s good news for Netflix and “Mudbound.”

“Mudbound’s” Rachel Morrison became the first woman ever nominated for this honor by the ASC and if she earns an Oscar nomination she’d also make history with the Academy in that respect (both stats are embarrassing, frankly).  

Continue reading ‘Mudbound’s’ Rachel Morrison Makes History As First ASC Awards Nominee at The Playlist.

I will admit, ashamed as I am, that I have not yet finished watching the first season of FX’s “Legion.” While the series pilot was truly one of the best episodes of television to air this year, subsequent episodes disappointed in their stricter adherence to traditional superhero show conventions. I bailed on the show fairly early.

I’ve been assured that in later episodes the show returns to the experimental short-film aesthetic of the pilot, and I have been planning to catch myself up on the series at some point down the line.

Continue reading ‘Legion’ Might Bring In Professor X at The Playlist.

So, the “Fantastic Four” series is deader than dead after Josh Trank’s disastrous 2015 attempt to reboot the series, right? Not so fast, “Legion” and “Fargo” TV series creator Noah Hawley is attempting to kick new life back into the franchise. And villains are becoming the new super hero black as of late.

While Comic Con in San Diego has been largely devoid of big announcements so far, at the end of “Legion” Hawley teased his interest in the “Fantastic Four” universe. 

Continue reading ‘Legion’s Noah Hawley Developing A ‘Doctor Doom’ Movie at The Playlist.

In this era of Peak TV there is no way to make everyone happy. There are always going to be snubs when it comes to the Emmy nominations. There are always going to be deserving nominees who didn’t make the cut. The question this year was whether the Television Academy could continue their trend of rewarding those truly deserving of recognition as opposed to those shows they just love to watch every week. And, some might say that’s one and the same.

Continue reading Best And Worst Of The 2017 Emmy Awards Nominations: ‘Stranger Things,’ ‘Westworld,’ ‘The Leftovers’ at The Playlist.

If there isn’t already, there ought to be an improbably long German compound word to describe the slightly panicky, drowning feeling of overwhelmed anticipation that is one’s natural state when contemplating just how much good TV there is out there — and that’s even before additional shows like this week’s “GLOW” and “The Mist” have been piled onto the queue. Add in an appreciation of just how few hours there are in a day, and just how much “other stuff” one is supposed to be doing with one’s life, and the prospect of even making a dent in the mountain of unwatched Golden Age TV can actually trigger a full-blown panic attack.

Continue reading The 25 Best TV Shows Of 2017 So Far at The Playlist.

To say Aubrey Plaza is in the middle of a breakout year is something of an understatement. Sure, she’s had career highlights such as “Parks and Recreation,” “Life After Beth” and “Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates,” but nothing has allowed her to stretch her impressive creative talents as a prestige television series, and the two dark comedies she has hitting theaters this summer.

First off, Noah Hawley’s “Legion” is in serious danger of being ignored by Emmy voters in a sea of impressive Peak TV programming and if it happens it might even be a worse sin than “The Leftovers” being snubbed for its first two seasons.

Continue reading Aubrey Plaza On ‘Little Hours,’ ‘Ingrid Goes West’ And ‘Legion’: “I Never Think Anything I Do Is Good” [Podcast] at The Playlist.

For episode 6 of Bingeworthy™, I’m joined by Rodrigo Perez, The Playlist‘s editor-in-chief. We chat about Marvel‘s ever-expanding television empire, including “Iron Fist,” its fourth Netflix series in the “Defenders” franchise. Listen to find out if I share Rodrigo’s brutal take on the show.

READ MORE: Podcast: Bingeworthy™ Talks ‘The Young Pope’ & Our Most Anticipated Shows For 2017

We then dive into the FX series “Legion,” which was airing the penultimate episode of its first season while we were recording.

Continue reading Podcast: Bingeworthy™ Discusses Peak Marvel TV at The Playlist.

We know, these are three things that really don’t go together, but it’s a quick and dirty way to get this news about TV show renewals out of the way.

First up, FX has renewed “Legion” for a second season. The show hasn’t exactly been a ratings blockbuster, but the reviews have mostly been strong, and it’s the kind of thing that could build an audience through streaming.

Continue reading ‘Legion,’ ‘The Good Fight’ & ‘Crashing’ Renewed For Season 2 at The Playlist.

After leaving the popular period drama in 2012 Stevens earned raves for his performance in the indie “The Guest,” but mostly found himself landing supporting roles in disappointing fare such as Bill Condon’s “The Fifth Estate” or Scott Frank’s “A Walk Among Tombstones.” The past year has been something of a game changer for the 34-year-old actor.

Continue reading Dan Stevens Goes From ‘Beauty And The Beast’ To The “It Gets Crazy” ‘Legion’ [Interview] at The Playlist.

The Bingeworthy Breakdown is an occasional look at new TV shows. An estimated 500 scripted seasons of TV will air in 2017, and to help you sort the wheat from the chaff, we’re going to look at the first episodes of the most notable of these to help you work out whether it’s worth tuning every week for them, waiting to binge later, or using the time to finally catch up on “The OA” or whatever else you’ve been waiting for.

Continue reading Bingeworthy Breakdown: Should You Be Watching ‘Legion’? at The Playlist.

The “X-Men” film franchise has a really messed-up continuity. After three successful films, the timeline sort of went off the rails with the not-quite-prequels. The most recent three “X-Men” films went back in time, then forward in time, and then finally back in time again to just further complicate things. Meanwhile, the Wolverine stand-alone movies seem to use whatever characters and storylines they want, disregarding any of the previously established continuity.

Continue reading ‘Legion’ Won’t Cross Over With The ‘X-Men’ Universe at The Playlist.