Bruce Wayne is heading back to the small screen in live-action form for the first time since 1968, with Fox chairman Kevin Reilly announcing that the upcoming Gotham TV series will focus on the exploits of the young billionaire prior to him donning the cape and cowl as Batman.
Gotham has been created by Bruno Heller (The Mentalist), with Danny Cannon (Judge Dredd) set to executive produce and direct the pilot episode. The show had been described as focussing on a pre-Commissioner Jim Gordon, but now it’s been revealed that it will instead adopt a Smallville style approach by exploring the origin of the Batman.
“The show will track Bruce from a child until he puts on a cape (in the finale),” said Reilly, before stating that The Riddler, Catwoman and The Penguin will also makes appearances. “We will see how they get to become what they are as Gotham is teetering on the edge. It is an operatic soap with a larger than life quality. 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, which isn’t to say we might not skip ahead. 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.”
As it happens, this isn’t the first time Warner Bros. has tried its hand at a young Bruce Wayne series – back in 1999, the studio gave the go ahead to a pitch from Tim McCanlies (The Iron Giant) for a TV series from Tollin/Robins Productions, which would have saw an eighteen-year-old Bruce Wayne returning to Gotham to discover a city rife with crime and corruption. Both Shawn Ashmore (X-Men) and Trevor Fehrman (Clerks III) were considered for the title role before Darren Aronofsky’s Batman: Year One put an end to the project, with Tollin/Robins subsequently reworking the idea into Smallville. Read more about that project here.
With Ben Affleck set to don the cape and cowl on the big screen for next year’s Batman vs. Superman ahead of a potential new Dark Knight movie franchise, it seems safe to assume that Gotham will have no connection to Warner Bros.’ Cinematic Universe. However, it’s certainly looking like a good time to be a Batman fan. How do you feel about the news? Let us know in the comments below….
Originally published January 13, 2014. Updated April 11, 2018.
