Joss Whedon

THE SKINNY: This past January, FX president and general manager John Landgraf mentioned that he was going to have lunch with Joss Whedon. Although FX has not offered fare in the fantasy/horror/sci-fi genre, fans were excited by the prospect of Whedon doing business with a cable network known for bold series and for writers who have sincerely good things to say about the executives there.

According to our exclusive conversation with Landgraf today at the Television Critics Association press tour, it turns out that Whedon may not be at FX – yet, anyway – but the genre situation may be changing.

JOHN LANDGRAF: I had a wonderful lunch with Joss Whedon. I guess you’d just have to call me a fan of his work. We talked a lot about the kinds of characters he wants to write and how those characters could fit into an FX universe. I think the thing with a guy like Joss is he’s just so busy. He’s always going to have many, many people courting him for his work. He’s just signed on to a big feature [THE AVENGERS], so my hope is that next time he thinks about a TV show, he’ll think about us. I think it would be a really happy combination – what he does with what we do and how we support writers.

iF: FX’s shows tend to be gritty, but set in a contemporary, naturalistic world. Joss Whedon’s shows tend to have some components that are not completely contemporary/naturalistic – would you be open to that on FX?

LANDGRAF: I would, yeah. In fact, we have a script just in development, but it’s a very prominent, important script in development for us – POWERS, which we’re developing from the Brian Michael Bendis graphic novel. Joss was asking me about that, because he’d heard about that and he was obviously aware of the property. It already had a writer on it, but that would have been unbelievable, if we could have gotten him involved in that. I think we are open to that. Because what are you going to do – you’re going to ask Joss Whedon to write a gritty cop show with no [extraordinary elements]? That’s not what he does, right? POWERS is something that I would highlight as a really prominent piece of development. We’re very methodical. We have one drama pilot and two comedy pilots. I’d say odds are pretty good we’ll pick all three of them up, just like we did last year, so POWERS would be sort of the next cycle after that if we move forward with it. POWERS has been in development with us for more than a year, a year-and-a-half. We have a tendency to work on scripts for a long time. When a script feels really right, then we make the pilot and we pick up almost every pilot we ever made has been picked up for series.

iF: With shows on FX now, do you have any idea of how long SONS OF ANARCHY might be around? I mean, if its ratings remain relatively the same as they are now?

LANDGRAF: Typical for us would be six or seven years. I wouldn’t prejudge – maybe it would be on the air longer. The audience is so rabidly passionate about that show, if the show maintains its quality and the audience maintains that level of passion, then it will stay on the air.

iF: And JUSTIFIED is very popular …

LANDGRAF: We’ve picked it up for a second season and had a fantastic first season, so I look at that as a long-term [series].

iF: Is there anything else you’d like to say about FX’s place in the television universe?

LANDGRAF: Well, we have a lot of young viewers who are part of our world and it’s interesting – we’ve bought almost all of the movies based on graphic novels, all of the Marvel movies, so I actually do see us developing potentially in that direction. We have a very, very robust young audience, and I’d like to find a show that is somehow true to the grittiness of FX’s brand, but also speaks to that audience, and it’s just a matter of trying to put those two things together.