Since 2013, Fox Entertainment has been in the works to bring the Batman universe onto the television screen as a live-action show called Gotham. This year at Television Critics Association 2014, Chairman Kevin Reilly addresses and confirms new details about how Fox will approach the series.
"This is an origin story for Bruce Wayne. The show will arc a young Bruce Wayne from a child (around 12) into the final episode of the series when he will put on the cape. 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 of the series. Which isn't to say we might not skip ahead.
We will see Detective Gordon, before he's a commissioner, all the characters you know, Bruce Wayne, the Penguin, all of them. We will see how they [classic Batman villains] get to become who they are as Gotham is teetering on the edge. You see the 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. It is an operatic soap that has a slightly larger-than-life quality."
Now this is not the prequel to Ben Affleck's Batman. According to Reilly who addressed it, "We own all the rights. That's what we're licensing. They (Warner Bros.) brought us the entire franchise for a very healthy license fee. We're not negotiating this piece meal. We have all of the underlying Batman rights for the entire franchise for this series." What does this mean? Fox Entertainment won a bidding war with other television networks in September 2013. The network has the rights to do a series based on how Bruce Wayne became Batman from adolescence to the second he dons the cowl. The show will be similar to the gritty tone of Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy, in which Nolan will not have a direct connection.
The show is set to staff up in February 2014, where the script will begin to be written by Bruno Heller (writer of The Mentalist) who will also be the executive producer of the show. According to a Deadline exclusive, Danny Cannon who has directed the pilots and became executive producer of the CSI franchise, Nikita, and The Tomorrow People. So, it is best to say that Gotham will be a crime drama that will focus on solving crimes in Gotham City similar to how CSI or how The Mentalist operates as a police procedural format show. There will be a case, in which Gordon will have to solve it and the rest of the Batman characters will be added in to bring favor to the storylines. Though, many will disagree and assume that Bruce Wayne will be the main focus of the show. His storyline seems to be more of the overarcing element point of the show that will lead to the conclusion of the series as Reilly has stated. The most Bat-fans will see of Bruce is the character figuring out how to channel his unresolved rage for justice from an adolescent into adulthood. It should be a well paced show that will prolong the appearances of Batman characters as well as draw out the cases for a possible one hour long show. The usual crime drama show has about at least twenty episodes and Reilly believes that the first season will be twenty-two episodes but this has not be confirmed yet. There is no set premiere date for the show.
Posted by Kristina Collins
