Gotham Creator: The Show Will Surpass the Films
The Gotham showrunner talks serialization, visual style, and the eventual appearance of the Joker.
by Matt Fowler MAY 8, 2014
With FOX officially announcing that they'd picked up Gotham to series, creator/showrunner Bruno Heller (Rome, The Mentalist) sat down with EW's James Hibberd for a Q&A/clarification session in order that fans get as many questions answered about the show as possible before it hits the air.
First off, the show will be serialized. A notion that FOX is totally on board with. "The world of Gotham is too big and operatic and complex to do it any other way but serialized," Heller stated, then adding that he had the entire first season mapped out. While also tinkering around with the idea of - six or seven seasons down the line ("hopefully," he said) - the show ending with Bruce Wayne putting on the cowl for the first time.
"There are so many iterations of the [Batman] story and so many great versions [that] there is no one road to go down," Heller added. "And if you stick to one of those roads, then you lose other parts you could go down. I read everything I could and then — I didn’t throw it away, but I started fresh. I would hate to pick a particular Batman iteration because I would be dismissing others. But for me, The Killing Joke was one of the great ones in the comic books. Obviously the [Frank] Miller version [The Dark Knight], as well."
Of course, the series doesn't have Batman at all - focusing on James Gordon's rise through the police ranks - as it all takes place before the heroes and villains and Gotham eventually ascend/descend into the likes of Batman, Catwoman, Penguin, etc. Which was one of the main reasons Heller took on the project. Because it didn't have to be connected to any film versions of Batman. When the topic of Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight Trilogy was brought up, Heller offered up how Gotham would be better. "I would say in terms of what [director and executive producer Danny Cannon and director of photography David Stockton] are doing — visually — Gotham will surpass the Batman movies."
Heller continued "The movies are a very rigorous, kind of Germanic take on that world. They’re visually stunning, but not particularly visually pleasurable. I would say this is much more on the street level of Gotham. There’s more people, it’s a more colorful place, it’s a more vivid place, it’s more crowded. The inspiration for me and Danny was New York in the ’70s, because we both remember that as a seminal moment, coming to the city for the first time. This is very much that kind of Gotham — intensely visual and three-dimensional and layered and gritty and dirty and sexy and dangerous."
But his praise for Gotham didn't stop there, as he also touted young actor David Mazouz (Touch). "I will say David Mazouz is, without doubt, the best actor ever to play the part of Bruce Wayne. Without doubt — including the people who played Batman. He is a genuine prodigy of an actor, as you will see on screen. Frankly, before David was cast, I was ambivalent about how much we would use Bruce Wayne in the series."
From the first trailer, we see that there are young versions of Penguin, Catwoman, Riddler, and Poison Ivy on the series. And Heller, naturally, doesn't want to spoil anything else regarding possible proto-villains. But he does state that there will be others. "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.
And yes, a pre-Joker Joker will eventually join the mix. "He’s the crown jewel of the Batman villains," Heller said. "He will be brought in with great care and a lot of thought."
"[Joker's] certainly going to be more Heath Ledger than Cesar Romero," he continued, "but like I say, all of these people are real people with feelings and emotions and history and parents. I just build from that."
You can read more of what Heller has to say about the characters of Alfred, Harvey Bullock, and Fish Mooney over at EW.com.
