The Batman Universe (Minus Batman) Makes It To TV With GOTHAM

Yesterday some quotes from Ed Brubaker about his and Greg Rucka’s comic Gotham Central and its chances of a TV adaptation started floating around. I opted not to run them because it seemed like a non-story, the kind of quotes creators give when asked about a project that’ll probably never happen but they don’t want to say absolutely no to.

“Every season, I wait to see if they’re going to announce something like that, and just a couple of months ago there was some article in the Hollywood Reporter about them supposedly developing it. I haven’t heard any confirmation on it or anything. You can easily see it.”

He went to say that the potential show had been thwarted by Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy and the failure of Birds of Prey.

“The book is actually more popular now than when we were doing it. There’s been talk of Gotham Central on TV since when we were doing the comic even (in the mid-2000s). Everyone at Warner Bros. really loved it. Chris Nolan after they did Birds of Prey had asked them to just please not do any Batman-related stuff until he was done with his trilogy — looking at Birds of Prey, you can see why. It was not the world’s greatest pilot.”

Why do I bring this up now? Because last night it was announced that a show very similar to Gotham Central actually is in development.

According to Deadline, Fox won a fierce bidding war over a series called Gotham, which will focus on a young Jim Gordon early in his career as a detective, before Batman shows up in the city. The show will, however, feature origin stories for many of the Dark Knight’s villains.

Gordon

Gotham will be headed up by Bruno Heller, creator of The Mentalist, so one wonders which show this will copy the premise of.

The timing of the announcement is also interesting, as it was made shortly after Agents of SHIELD aired on ABC. It seems to be an obvious attempt to steer the conversation away from Marvel’s new series and bring it towards DC’s upcoming one.

Skott Stotland is a thousand monkeys in a people costume. They have been writing for the internet for over a decade.

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