Gotham (Fox)

[riddler]

Arrow does to an extent as well. For all his faults, chief Quentin is an honest cop. While police officers haven't been made out to be villains, it is clearly a corrupt city.

[The Laughing Fish]

According to this, producers are looking for a ten year old boy to play Bruce Wayne, and the show is supposed to take place shortly after his parents are murdered.

Source: screencrush.com/fox-gotham-tv-series-batman-bruce-wayne-series-regular/‎

I don't think I'll bother watching this show. I know that Gordon will always be an important part of the Batman mythos, but having a show focused on him doesn't excite me one bit.

[johnnygobbs]

I prefer Fox shows, like 'The Walking Dead', to the standard identikit kid-orientated stuff we get from the CW so I'm tentatively looking forward to the show.  By and large WB is much better when it comes to films than Fox, especially Fox has now lost the 'Star Wars' franchise and screwed-up the 'Aliens' and 'Die Hard' golden gooses practically beyond repair, but I prefer Fox's style when it comes to TV.

I don't know what direction the show will go in if it takes place immediately after the death of the Waynes since this will presumably exclude a large portion of the characters that feature in the comic-books but maybe Fox will produce their own array of interesting characters to join Gordon and his family, assuming Barbara is even born by this stage, and presumably Commissioner Loeb and perhaps Flass could make an appearance.

[Travesty]

Sounds pretty bad to me. I'll probably just skip this show entirely.

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.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/01/13/foxs-gotham-is-a-batman-origin-story-and-will-have-a-christopher-nolan-esque-tone?abthid=52d45abf2fa033fd53000037

[johnnygobbs]

It doesn't sound entirely terrible but there's a contradiction about what type of tone they're going for.  On one hand they want it to be 'operatic'.  On the other hand, they want it to have the 'gritty', organic' feel of Nolan's low-key movies.  I don't think they can do both.

[The Dark Knight]

Eh, I'll give it a look. But the concept doesn't excite me.

[BatmAngelus]

This makes a ton more sense to me than the "adventures of young Gordon" logline that was originally announced.  Sure, it's not Gotham Central or a full on Batman TV show, but making Bruce a regular part of the show is just good business sense in bringing in the audience and gives the show more legs.  If done right, this could be part Year One (on Gordon's end) and part The Man Who Falls on Bruce's end.

Of course, we'll just have to see how well they pull this off.  It's too soon to judge whether this will be great or will be a disaster.  I think the big red flag for some is the idea of bringing in the Rogues Gallery characters before Bruce becomes Batman, but even then, we don't know what they have planned for that.  Besides, changing the villains' origins from the comics hasn't always resulted in disaster either.  Notable examples: Jack Napier and BTAS's Mr. Freeze.  Hell, I'm sure we'll see Harvey Dent as Bruce's friend and yeah, we saw the "future enemy starts out as a friend" thing in Smallville, but a) I thought the Lex stuff was the best element of that show and b) if done right, it could be the most character exploration of Harvey Dent since the animated series, given the nature of the TV format.

I realize the term "operatic soap" induces eye-rolling, but I have serious doubts that this will be "Gotham High" or "Smallville with Bruce"- if that's what WB TV studios wanted, they would've easily sold the show in-house at the CW rather than pitched it to the Fox network, which has more adult-oriented material.  Looking forward to hearing more.

[johnnygobbs]

The part that excites me the most is seeing the various members of Batman's Rogues Gallery before they become super-villains.  One element we understandably don't get in all the movies is a true glimpse into the villains' back-stories/childhoods (Talia Al Ghul in 'TDKR' being a rare exception).  I'd love to see the roots of what makes them tick, including their various family backgrounds etc.  Also, dare I say it but I'm actually a little more excited by this idea than I am of 'Batman v Superman' as far as the onscreen Batman goes.

[BatmAngelus]

I actually agree, johnnygobbs.  While I'm willing to give Affleck a chance and see a new Batman on the big screen, my enthusiasm for BvS has waned a bit given that I was underwhelmed by MoS in the first place and haven't been too excited by the rumors that've swirled around for the past few months.  Of course, this could change in time when new info comes in.

But on the other hand, I think this show could have potential and will allow for more character development in Bruce and Gordon's origins than we got in, say, B89 and Batman Begins and will be able to juggle multiple Gotham characters far better than the movies could, simply due to the long form nature of the medium.  As I said, though, this is dependent on the writers' execution of the material, so we'll just have to see how it turns out.

[Travesty]

It just sounds way too much like Smallville, now. We wont see Bruce put on the suit until the very last episode, and we see younger versions of the villains. And of course, the part where they said it'll be a soap opera(like Smallville), doesn't help my enthusiasm.

I guess if you enjoyed Smallville, I can see why you may be interested or excited, but for me, I hated that show and the concept. And so far, this sounds exactly like it. Just because its going to Fox, doesn't mean it'll automatically be an "adult oriented show". Plus, I hate how it's going to be a Nolanized version of Gotham.

I'll check it out when it comes out, but I wont be following the production of it that much, and I'm not that excited about it, as it is. Just too many red flags for me.