Earlier this week we brought you some comments from Gotham showrunner Bruno Heller about the inclusion of Poison Ivy – sorry, Ivy Pepper – and The Joker in the upcoming Batman prequel series, and now he’s been talking about utilising another two members of The Dark Knight’s Rogues Gallery in Harvey Dent and Professor Hugo Strange.
“We’re playing Harvey Dent slightly older,” Heller tells IGN with regards to the future Two-Face. “He’s more Gordon’s age in this telling. One of the things to avoid in order not to tell a high school story — which would be great, but it”s a different show on a different network at a different time that I would not be a part of. But he will go back to school and villains will be part of that world.”
And as for Hugo Strange, it seems his story will be linked with that of Arkham Asylum, with Heller stating that: “Hugo Strange is going to pop up because we’re going to start dealing with how Arkham was created and why Arkham was created in the way that it was. It’s a Season One thing because in our telling of it the way Arkham was created and the why and how is one of the causes of the particular criminal climate in Gotham that allowed Batman to happen. The revolving door of Arkham is both a brilliant narrative device because it allows you to -you don’t have to kill people off, you can just put them in cold storage -but if you’re telling the story from the start you kind of have to explain, ‘What the f*ck? Why don’t you make that place a place people don’t escape from?’ We’re going to explain why it is the way it is and Hugo Strange is a big part of that.”
Gotham is set to premiere on FOX on Monday, September 22nd, with Ben McKenzie (The O.C.) starring as Detective Jim Gordon alongside Sean Pertwee (Dog Soldiers) as Alfred Pennyworth, Donal Logue (Sons of Anarchy) as Harvey Bullock, newcomer Camren Bicondova as Selina Kyle, David Mazouz (Touch) as Bruce Wayne, Robin Lord Taylor (Another Earth) as Oswald Cobblepot, Cory Michael Smith (Olive Kitteridge) as Edward Nygma, Jada Pinkett Smith (The Matrix) as Fish Mooney, Clare Foley (Sinister) as Ivy Pepper, Zabryna Guevara (The Guilt Trip) as Detective Essen, Victoria Cartagena (Salt) as Renee Montoya, Andrew Stewart Jones (The Tomorrow People) as Crispus Allen, Erin Richards (Being Human) as Barbara Kean, Drew Powell (Malcolm in the Middle) as Butch Gilzean, Kyle Massey (That’s So Raven, Cory in the House) as Macky and Carol Kane (Annie Hall) as Gertrud Kapelput. Watch the first trailer here.
Originally published July 23, 2014. Updated December 13, 2019.
