Fox Developing "Gotham" Young Jim Gordon Series

[Captaindemotion]

If he is 10-12 and the series runs for the 7 years or so that many series do, I would've thought it more likely to end with him heading on his travels that culminate in him learning all his skills as Batman. Of course, they could always have a flash forward to Gordon becoming commissioner and Bruce donning the mask.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

^^^
Shows often set out roadmaps that they want to follow. Whether they can follow through to the planned conclusion depends on achieving the necessary longevity to do so. The stated goals aren't necessarily in conflict. It's just a question of whether they'll be achieved. Kevin Reilly also said that, while the hope is that the young actor playing Bruce Wayne would age to the point where he would become Batman at the end, he wouldn't rule out that they might jump ahead in time at some point.

 

[Mach5]

How is it that the DC Comics (Warner Bros.) property ended up on Fox?

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

How is it that the DC Comics (Warner Bros.) property ended up on Fox?

It's happened before. Human Target aired on Fox. David E. Kelley's unsuccessful Wonder Woman pilot was for NBC, and Constantine has been ordered to pilot for NBC. Warners develops DC properties for the CW if they're appropriate in terms of approach and budget, but they'll go elsewhere if not. Fox is paying a very hefty license fee for Gotham. The show will likely have a budget well beyond those of CW shows.

 

[Christopher]

I dunno... I was more interested when it was just a Jim Gordon series, with the Wayne murder case being maybe just a background thread. Of course, then it would've just been a cop show, but that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing as long as they got Gordon's character right, because he's a good character. The story of the one honest cop cleaning up a corrupt force -- and doing it without Batman -- could've been quite interesting. Now it just feels like "Let's do Smallville but with Batman," like something that started out as a fresh approach has been forced into a more derivative mold, so my curiosity is lessened. I'll give it a fair chance when it premieres, but so far I'm not engaged.

How is it that the DC Comics (Warner Bros.) property ended up on Fox?

Because FOX made the highest bid, presumably. It's in the best interests of a TV studio to offer its shows to multiple networks and see who makes the highest offer. If they were required to air the show on the network owned by the same conglomerate as themselves, that could keep them from getting the best possible deal and the best possible budget. So while there are benefits to the studio and the network being under common ownership and being able to take advantage of that corporate synergy, it's certainly not mandatory, nor should it ever be.

 

[JD]

As for the whole Barbara debate, I wouldn't be surprised if we did see Gordon with a young daughter named Barbara, but I doubt very much we will see her as Batgirl.

 

[Mach5]

As for the whole Barbara debate, I wouldn't be surprised if we did see Gordon with a young daughter named Barbara, but I doubt very much we will see her as Batgirl.

Of course we will, she'll be introduced in Season 16 finale

 

[Alidar Jarok]

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.

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.

It's only hard to reconcile if you think one season will equal one year.

 

[Christopher]

It's only hard to reconcile if you think one season will equal one year.

True, but most TV series these days seem obsessed with keeping everything in real time. They even put gaps in the storyline to correspond to midseason breaks or summer hiatuses. So while one season = one year is indeed an assumption, it's one that has an enormous amount of precedent.

 

[Alidar Jarok]

But it's also one that gets broken if they need someone to get older quickly (HBO's Rome), reach a certain date quickly (Enterprise broke the one year rule starting in the third season), or just because it made sense for the story (LOST). My point is Bruce Wayne's age at the start of the show is hardly a roadblock.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Yeah, off the top of my head, Lost, Desperate Housewives and 24 all jumped ahead in time to suit the storyline. But generally one season = one year.

 

[Christopher]

But it's also one that gets broken if they need someone to get older quickly (HBO's Rome), reach a certain date quickly (Enterprise broke the one year rule starting in the third season), or just because it made sense for the story (LOST). My point is Bruce Wayne's age at the start of the show is hardly a roadblock.

Of course not. I think we all realize that we're not talking about certainties at this stage, just possibilities. But to a first approximation, it's reasonable to treat the standard approach as more likely to occur than the exceptional approach, by definition. There are far more conventional shows than unconventional ones, so I'm weighing the odds on that basis. With the implicit understanding that probability is not certainty, of course.

As for Enterprise, it didn't stick quite to one year per season, but it wasn't that far off from it, and aside from the 6-year leap forward to the series finale (which they wouldn't have done if the show hadn't been cancelled), they didn't go longer than a year per season. Season 1 spanned about 10 months, April 2151 to February 2152. Season 2 actually spanned considerably more than one year; the episode right before the season finale was in March '53, and the finale itself jumped forward several months due to the considerable travel times involved. It took about a month to get back to Earth after the Xindi attack, an unspecified amount of time for the debate, preparations, and refit, then 7 weeks to reach the Expanse, so I'd say it probably ended sometime in June or July of '53. Season 3 began 6 weeks after that -- say late August or so -- and the last log entry in the season 3 finale was on 2/14/54, so that whole season took no more than six months. "Terra Prime" ended in late January '55, so that season took 11 months -- but there are some enormous gaps between episodes, since there are only 12 distinct storylines in the season. ("Home" seems to be shortly after the Xindi affair, late February or early March; the Augment trilogy has log entries in May, despite dialogue suggesting it's shortly after "Home"; the Vulcan trilogy is in late July, with "Daedalus" a week later; "Observer Effect" is unspecified, but then the Romulan-drone trilogy is in November! After that, the episodes hang closer together.)

Cumulatively, though, you've got four seasons of episodes (not counting the finale) spanning three years and nine months of story time. So yeah, despite some fluctuation in the Xindi arc, on the whole ENT did stay pretty close to one year per season, if not less.

 

[RoJoHen]

Yeah, off the top of my head, Lost

And at the same time, the first 4 seasons of Lost take place over the span of a few months. Season 4 is literally about one week long.

 

[Thestral]

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.

Eh? Heroes (Hayden Panettiere) and Friday Night Lights (Aimee Teegarden) did just fine with under-18s in major roles.

 

[Christopher]

And at the same time, the first 4 seasons of Lost take place over the span of a few months. Season 4 is literally about one week long.

But that's an example where the shows cover considerably less than real time. What we're talking about here would be a situation where the series covers considerably more than one year per season. There are a few cases that fit, though. Alias had a 2-year time skip at the end of season 2. 24, by necessity, skipped years between seasons -- and of course it's the ultimate example of a season taking less than a year, since each season is only one day long. (Although not the only example. The short-lived 2006 series Day Break was about a protagonist who repeated the same day over and over, Groundhog Day-style, so technically the season covered only a day or so.) Battlestar Galactica's first two seasons spanned only 9 months, then the finale jumped forward a year or more. Merlin had several time skips of 1-2 years between seasons. And there's the extreme case of Fringe, whose final season was set about 25 years after the previous season (although only a few years after from the characters' subjective point of view, since they were in stasis for most of it).

Eh? Heroes (Hayden Panettiere) and Friday Night Lights (Aimee Teegarden) did just fine with under-18s in major roles.

You're talking about actors who started out at 16 or 17. From what I can find, actors that age are allowed to work six hours a day, but actors age 9-15 -- which is what you'd need if Bruce is only 12 -- can only work five hours a day.

Also, both of those were ensemble-cast series, so no actor would've had that large a percentage of the total runtime. If what's been reported recently about Gotham is true, then it would be at least as much Bruce's story as Gordon's, so they'd want an actor who can handle a central role. I wouldn't want them to work a child actor that hard, even if they could. The things I'm hearing about the show would simply make more sense if they cast an older actor, for reasons of availability, experience, and in-story chronology. As suggested above, even if they start out with a younger Bruce, a major time skip at some point -- probably fairly early in the series -- would seem to make sense.

 

[RoJoHen]

And at the same time, the first 4 seasons of Lost take place over the span of a few months. Season 4 is literally about one week long.

But that's an example where the shows cover considerably less than real time. What we're talking about here would be a situation where the series covers considerably more than one year per season.

I am aware of the conversation at hand. The point was made that Lost had a major time jump. Indeed, it skipped 3 years ahead between Seasons 4 and 5.

Before that time jump, though, the first four seasons covered a mere series of months. Not even half a year had passed.

My point was that it really doesn't matter which way you do it. It'll all be up to the stories they want to tell. If they get to the end of the first season and think, "Hey, we want to see an older teenage Barbara," they'll adjust their plans.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

If what's been reported recently about Gotham is true, then it would be at least as much Bruce's story as Gordon's, so they'd want an actor who can handle a central role.

What are you basing that on? They've said that the show will feature Bruce Wayne's development from childhood to the point where he becomes Batman, but that could easily be a subplot involving a Bruce Wayne who's a supporting character, and given that they've said he'll start off as a 12-year-old it's more likely that he'll be a supporting character. I know you're making a supposition that they'll change that and age him up, but do you have anything concrete to base that upon?

 

[Alidar Jarok]

But that's an example where the shows cover considerably less than real time. What we're talking about here would be a situation where the series covers considerably more than one year per season.

Eh, not really. We're just talking about any example where a season doesn't equal a year. My point is it's easy to have a show get around the problem of starting with a young Bruce Wayne and ending up with Batman.

Also, both of those were ensemble-cast series, so no actor would've had that large a percentage of the total runtime. If what's been reported recently about Gotham is true, then it would be at least as much Bruce's story as Gordon's, so they'd want an actor who can handle a central role. I wouldn't want them to work a child actor that hard, even if they could.

Or they recast when he's older and not give him many meaty scenes until then.

 

[Christopher]

No, my whole point is that we don't have anything concrete, that the reports we're getting are conflicting. But in the past couple of months, the press releases seem to be playing up the Batman-origin side of the show a hell of a lot more than the Jim Gordon side.

Of course I'm not saying "This is what they will definitely do," because it's nonsense to try to speak in definitive terms when we have so little information. Basically I'm describing what approach I would probably take if I were producing a show within the suggested parameters. If the focus is on Bruce as a central character as the press releases seem to suggest, if the show will be following his journey as an ongoing core thred, then it would be wiser to cast an older teen or young adult who could pass as a teen.

Even from a storytelling standpoint, I think there are more stories to tell about an older-teen Bruce than a preteen Bruce. An older Bruce would not only have more freedom of action and movement, but would be more eligible for romantic plotlines and more capable of engaging in fight scenes. A 12-year-old Bruce would basically be dependent on Alfred -- or Leslie Thompkins, or some older guardian. He might be obsessed with learning to fight crime, but he couldn't really do that much from a story standpoint at that age, since he'd need to spend a bunch of time in school and wouldn't be able to drive and so forth. It would be limiting to make him that young.

So it just seems to me that an older Bruce would be a better idea, for a variety of reasons. That doesn't mean they will do it that way, since producers don't always make good decisions. Hell, I'm not convinced doing this show at all is a good idea. I'm just saying what seems to me like the most reasonable approach based on what little, vague information we have. It's just a conjectural exercise.

My point is it's easy to have a show get around the problem of starting with a young Bruce Wayne and ending up with Batman.
...
Or they recast when he's older and not give him many meaty scenes until then.

But that still suggests that it's desirable to have an older Bruce, so that raises the question, why start with a young Bruce at all? What's the advantage of that? Okay, maybe you want to really explore what it was like for him after his parents died, go into that early period of adjustment with more depth than ever before. But it seems it would be simpler just to start out with Bruce older -- maybe show the murder at the start of the pilot, then jump forward a few years in the pilot itself.

 

[Out Of My Vulcan Mind]

Or they recast when he's older and not give him many meaty scenes until then.

Yeah, Bruce Wayne might start out as a supporting character with his development a subplot and then become more of a focal point as the actor ages or the part is recast.

But in the past couple of months, the press releases seem to be playing up the Batman-origin side of the show a hell of a lot more than the Jim Gordon side.

Which press releases are you referring to? You seem to think Bruce Wayne has been played up in the press more than he actually has. Kevin Reilly spoke about him being part of the series at the TCA press tour, but he didn't say how big a part the character and his development would have and he specifically said he would start out at about the age of 12, which suggests he won't be a co-lead. The only press release since then that I'm aware of is the one announcing McKenzie's casting, which reads:

Ben McKenzie (Southland, The O.C.) has been cast in the lead role of Detective James Gordon in FOX and Warner Bros. Television's "GOTHAM," which has a series commitment at the network.

Based upon characters published by DC Comics, "GOTHAM" is a drama exploring the origin stories of Commissioner James Gordon and the villains that made Gotham famous.

Bruno Heller (The Mentalist, Rome) wrote the pilot script and will serve as executive producer. Danny Cannon (the CSI series, Nikita) will direct and executive produce the pilot.

There are plenty of examples of websites jumping to conclusions about the extent of Bruce Wayne's role in the series, leading to lots of Smallville comparisons, but there's been very little from the producers of the show to that effect.