FOX's Gotham Is a Batman Origin Story and Will Have a Christopher Nolan-Esque Tone
"Gotham on the brink."
by Roth Cornet JANUARY 13, 2014
Back in September, it was announced that FOX had given a straight-to-series order to a new live-action television series entitled Gotham, which was purportedly an origin story for*Commissioner Gordon. Many of us were left wondering how the network planned to do a comic-based TV show without a superhero at its center. What would distinguish Gotham from another cop/detective series?
At today's TCA (Television Critics Association) press tour*Chairman of Entertainment at FOX Kevin Reilly revealed that this series would indeed function as an origin story for Batman.
"This is an origin story for young Bruce Wayne," Reilly said, promising that all of the classic Batman characters and villains would make an appearance, including: The Penguin, The Riddler, Commissioner Gordon, and The Joker. This is a series about "Gotham on the brink" he said, and "how they all became who they were, what events led up to these characters becoming Catwoman [and so on]." The Chairman described the series as "operatic" and "larger-than-life."
It will follow Bruce Wayne from childhood through his development into the Dark Night, with the final episode marking the moment when he puts on the cape. They're not certain what age young Bruce will be at this point, but Reilly estimates that he will be about 13 at the start of the series. "The actor will grow-up, if we do our job well he'll be a young man and ready [to be Batman] by the end," he said. "Which isn't to say we might not skip ahead."
Reilly followed up by saying that this would be a serialized show that will function on its own, separate from the Warner Brothers DC cinematic universe. "We own all the rights.That's what we're licencing," he said. "They brought us the entire franchise for a very healthy licence fee. We're not negotiating this piece meal. We have all of the underlying Batman rights for the entire franchise for this series."
He continued, saying, "That's what I like about this, it's not some sort of adjunct companion series. This is the Batman franchise, just backing it up. I think that gives it a real focus as to what the show is about and what stories we're telling."
There will be no connection to the Batman/Bruce Wayne that*Ben Affleck will be introducing in*Zack Snyder's Man of Steel 2, tentatively titled Batman vs. Superman. "Warner Brothers manages the entire franchise and its one of their top global franchises of all," Reilly said."So there will be an awareness of both and we'll have to coordinate when we're in the market place, but the productions are not piggy-backing off one another."
The series will be in the vein of the grittier tone that Christopher Nolan established in his Dark Knight trilogy, it will be very organic to that world, though Nolan will not have a direct connection to the production. We won't see Batman's*cape and cowl till the series' conclusion, as mentioned, and it will be a slow reveal on the Supervillains alter-egos as well. "We're arcing to that," Reilly clarified. "We're not starting in that world where the villains are in costume. You see markers for it that are kind of delicious. You begin to see the evolution of the eccentricities that become those characters, but you really sort of arc there. We don't start out in capes and costumes."
When asked if there is a possibility that they may spinoff additional characters, Reilly said that he "certainly hopes so." Adding, "Do I think we'll peel out The Riddler? I don't. There's a large tapestry of characters to service over many years. So I hope we can just keep it on for a long, long run."
As the the number of episodes, Reilly jokes that, "Warner Brothers would like it to be 22 because they'd like as many as they can get," but no decisions have been made in regards to either the length of the series or a premiere date.
The show begins staffing shortly, with scripts expected to quickly following.
We will keep you updated as details on this series emerge.
