News Batman Prequel ‘Pennyworth’ gets series order At Epix

yes

 

Hm, ...

what if they made the Cobra cult into this show's Hydra?

 

Or better yet, use actual Hydra and do a crossover with Agent Carter.

 

There's too much of a difference between this show and "Agent Carter". Like, people were actually asking for "Agent Carter".

 

Jack Bannon cast as Alfred Pennyworth

 

Ben Aldridge To Play Thomas Wayne

 

But . .. but that would mean mixing Marvel with DC!

 

I like to live dangerously.

 

Yeah, totally screams "Batman Prequel" to me.

 

Ok, that was rather vague.

 

I assume it's going to be in its own universe? No connection to Gotham or Nolanverse?

 

I believe that's what they've said.
The biggest question mark for me is how exactly this is going to connect to the Batman mythos beyond having characters who happen to be named Alfred Pennyworth and Thomas Wayne. The '6os England setting seems to make it kind of hard to work in characters like Penguin, The Joker, The Riddler, ect.

 

That's good, as I see it. If you're going to do a spinoff, it should add something new to the universe, not just repeat the exact same beats. The thing that disappointed me about Gotham was that I expected a crime drama about Jim Gordon trying to clean up a corrupt police force and instead got a show that was mostly about Batman villains romping around in Bruce's early adolescence.

The thing about Alfred is, he has this whole mysterious past as a government agent, an impressive history of his own before he became associated with Bruce Wayne. It's not supposed to be another blasted Batman show, it's supposed to be a show about that untold part of Alfred's life. Its distance from the Batman mythos should be a feature, not a bug. What I'm afraid of is that these producers will chicken out again like they did on Gotham and concoct even more ridiculous excuses to include Batman characters prematurely.

 

Perhaps we will see the parents of the Batman villains, who happen to have traits just like said villains.

Kor

 

The problem with Gotham as originally conceived is that it had a high likelihood of simply becoming a procedural with a guy named Gordon in it. We'd only be watching because of that name. They decided not to do that, and instead just made a batman show without batman in it - which is fine because we'll never get a real batman show anyway.

 

But then this is basically just another spy thriller, and I really don't see the point of doing a show set in the Batman/DC universe without using elements of the Batman/DC Universe.

 

A typical problem with all these prequels.

 

The Mary Tyler Moore Show was a half-hour sitcom about a TV news station. Mary's boss Lou Grant was eventually spun off into a critically acclaimed hourlong drama about newspaper reporters, with essentially no connection to TMTMS beyond Lou himself. I don't remember a lot of people complaining about what the "point" was. What is the point of doing a spinoff if you don't do something new, if you don't fill in gaps that haven't previously been explored?

Anyway, there's much more to the DC Universe than Batman characters. It has its non-superheroic side, including spy characters that the show could draw on, like King Faraday or the Checkmate organization. Or mercenaries like Slade Wilson, except Titans seems to have prior claim on him for now. Maybe the Human Target, as a master of disguise, could be adapted for the show. Or it could deal with larger, older organizations like the League of Shadows. There's probably a ton of obscure DC lore to draw on, ranging from WWII-era comics to the modern day. Look how much use Arrow's gotten out of characters with no connection to Green Arrow in the comics.

 

The appeal with something like that is seeing Ed Asner continue to play Lou on a weekly basis, but this doesn't have that since it's a new version of the character with a new actor. If this was a Gotham spinoff with Sean Pertwee as Alfred return to his spy career after Gotham I would be there in an instant.
And when it comes to this kind of stuff there is also W*A*L*T*E*R, which followed as post M*A*S*H* Walter "Radar" O'Reilly after he sold the family farm, sent his mother to live with his aunt, and became a cop in St. Louis.

OK, that actually is a good point.

 

BRB, off to write a pilot script for my Dianne Quinn show, about a mid-30s woman trying to balance single motherhood with her graduate psychology studies in Central City. Fans will shiver with glee whenever she indulges in her ultimate guilty pleasure - supermarket romance novels! I'm gonna be rich!