Fox Developing "Gotham" Young Jim Gordon Series

Why can't she be the same age as Bruce?

 

Because then she'd be Batwoman?

 

You yourself said that they can reinvent at Will, if this is a series that features a child Bruce Wayne (unless they have changed that aspect), why worry about a point we are never going to get to?

 

If Gordon is married and has kids one of them could be Barbara as a toddler. It wouldn't lead to her becoming Batgirl on screen. It would just be a nod to fans.

 

If Batman is a character in this at all, we could maybe see a toddler Barbara donning a blanket cape and playing Batgirl in the house. That could be fun.

 

I'm just saying that if you make her a peer of Bruce, then it's kind of sexist to call her a "girl" while he's a "man." That sort of thing was acceptable in 1967, but it would be in bad taste today, I think. Sure, Batgirl's an adult in the comics, but it's more acceptable if she started using the name when she was a college student and then just stuck with it for the sake of recognition.

So I'm not talking about whether it can be changed, but whether that particular change is a good idea. If a character is called Batgirl, it stands to reason that she belongs to a younger generation than Batman.

And from what I'm hearing, I really doubt they'll keep Bruce as a child. In the original proposal where the focus was on Gordon and the GCPD, with Bruce's story simmering in the background, I could buy that. But these days the indications are that it'll be as much a coming-of-age story for Bruce as a story about Gordon, and that it'll culminate with Bruce becoming Batman if the show runs to completion. So there's no way they aren't going to age him up. When Smallville started, Clark was nominally 15 and was played by a 24-year-old. Most likely they'll go a similar route with Bruce.

 

The plan is for Bruce Wayne to be a supporting character, starting out at about the age of 12. He would only become Batman right at the end of the series if it runs the distance.

 

Okay. That doesn't rule out that scene. It just pushes it back to the end of the show.

 

Batgirl won't be in the series, but the series will naturally feature far more of Gordon's home life than any of the movies. If he's married with children then one of them may as well be Barbara.

 

Again, I doubt any series expects to run for a decade or more, so if the plan is for him to become Batman at the end, I think they'll make him older than that. Maybe the pilot will begin with him at 12 and then jump forward a few years.

Plus there are child labor laws to consider. If they want Bruce to be one of the central characters in the show, if they want him to have enough screen time to fill such a role, then they will have to cast someone at least 18 years old, even if they pass him off as younger. We've been sufficiently conditioned by decades of TV and movies to accept twentysomething actors as 15- or 16-year-olds, but not 12-year-olds.

 

Kevin Reilly said off the cuff that Bruce would start out at about the age of 12. The casting call listed a couple of months ago actually put the age a little lower at the age of 10, and it was a casting call for a series regular. Of course there could be a change close to production, but it seems that the plan is for Bruce to be a supporting character and his development will be an ongoing substory with Gordon as the primary focus.

 

None of the younger Batman Family superheroes will be in the series, at least not in their superhero guises. The premise doesn't allow for it.

 

Nothing says drama better than your pregnant wife being held hostage by the Joker.

 

I mentioned "Batgirl" in quotes because I don't expect to see Barbara in that guise given the show's premise or the age she'd be. I just thought that it would be nice to have the character who would become Batgirl there. She could be a toddler (never liked that word) and therefore a simple nod, or she could be an older child capable of being an early version of the Barbara we know, if they can manage that. She wasn't missed in the movies about Batman but as mentioned, this show focusses on Jim Gordon and I wouldn't want to see her left out completely.

 

IIRC, the last guy to play Murdock ended up in Gotham too...

 

Jim's son could also be there. He grows up to have a lot of problems due to being jealous of his sister so it might be nice to see at least a little it of that upbringing. With a full series, there's room for that.

 

And if that is the case, then the claim that the series will end with Bruce becoming Batman becomes questionable, unless they plan to have Batman start out as a teenager. The point is that the two claims -- that Bruce will start out preadolescent and that the series will culminate with Bruce becoming Batman -- are difficult to reconcile. I don't see how they can both be true. So I think we're getting garbled information here, that maybe the different reports represent different phases in the development of the series, and we don't really know at this point what form the series will actually take. So everything we've heard -- except solid information like a casting announcement -- should be taken with a grain of salt.