Gotham showrunner Bruno Heller (The Mentalist) has shared a lot of new details on Gotham, the upcoming TV series which will explore Bruce Wayne’s childhood and the young Detective Jim Gordon’s battles against the early version of Batman’s rogues gallery; villains like Penguin and The Riddler!
Confirming that Gotham – which you can see the first trailer for by clicking here – will have no connections with the Caped Crusader we’ll see played by Ben Affleck in 2016’s Batman/Superman, Heller revealed what it was that appealed to him about exploring this period in Bruce Wayne’s life.
For me, if they said, “Do Batman,” I would have said, “No.” I would have not been interested at all. I don’t think Batman works very well on TV — to have people behind masks. Frankly, all those superhero stories I’ve seen, I always love them until they get into the costume. And then it’s, “Oh, okay, they’ve ascended, they’ve stopped becoming humans.” It’s their apotheosis. They go to heaven and they’re Superman. There have been so many great versions of it. This is a version of something else entirely.
The showrunner then explained that they already have the first season mapped out and that Gotham will be serialized with some procedural elements. As for which recognisable characters we should expect to see in the series, Heller confirmed several names and dropped some hints about others.
Obviously, the Penguin, Riddler, young Catwoman, Alfred. Possibly Harvey Dent. Poison Ivy. Um … and then there will be others, but I hate to — I’m so used to doing a police procedural, so I’m used to telling, “Next week he’s going to go there.” With this, it’s very much storytelling. So I would be remiss to tell you who will show up when. I will say we’re not going to skimp on giving people the characters they want and expect from Gotham. But when and how they’re going to show up is half the fun. Penguin is one of those guys that, as soon as you see him, you go, “Oh, that’s the Penguin.” It would be hard to disguise him as somebody else.
Heller went on to discuss how this take on Batman’s world will differ to what we see on the big screen, saying that he believes, “Gotham will surpass the Batman movies” in terms of visuals and confidently claiming that “David Mazouz is, without doubt, the best actor ever to play the part of Bruce Wayne.”
However, one possible appearance that fans have been very interested in learning more about is that of The Joker. No one has played the iconic villain since the late Heath Ledger’s Academy Award winning performance in 2008’s The Dark Knight, but he will indeed be making an appearance in Gotham.
He’s the crown jewel of the Batman villains. He will be brought in with great care and a lot of thought. I’ve written scenes for Julius Caesar and Marc Anthony and Cleopatra. So while that is a serious and valid note, you can’t get into doing this without going there. That was a wonderful performance and — apart from everything else — wonderful make-up. And we should try to live up to that. It will be a different character. It’s certainly going to be more Heath Ledger than Cesar Romero. But like I say, all of these people are real people with feelings and emotions and history and parents. I just build from that.
Finally, Heller confirmed that the plan is indeed for the series to end with Bruce Wayne becoming Batman and donning the cowl, “Yes, whether metaphorically or literally — something like that. But that’s six or seven years down the line. Hopefully.” Are you looking forward to Gotham?
Source: EW
