Is it true there is going to be a Batman TV show like Smallville?

[NextGen123]

I recently read that there will be a Batman series on TV about his early years as a crime fighter. Depending on who writes and produces this, it could well surpass Smallville. I didn't discover Smallville until it was off the air. I underestimated at how truly good the show was.

Any opinions out there as to what our BBS members know about the upcoming Batman TV show?

 

[bigdaddy]

Birds of Prey?

 

[Mr Silver]

Nope, its been rumored ever since Smallville premiered. But with Christopher Nolan rebooting the franchise and Warner reluctant to "tweak" the continunity set by the Nolan films its not going to happen for a while.

 

[Admiral_Young]

The Batman TV show the original poster was talking about was first "reported" by the infamous website comicbookmovies.com a few months ago. No one else picked up the story to my knowledge and it has sense been debunked. There are no shows planned for the Batman franchise. Nolan will be Executive Producing a reboot of the film franchise to be determined later after his trilogy is complete.

 

[Dream]

Nope. As long as the Batman movies continue to be sucessful, Warners will never allow a live action Batman tv show to be made.

The Bat Embargo at work!

 

[Nerys Myk]

Wasn't the original pitch that evolved into Smallville built around a preBatman Bruce Wayne?

 

[Admiral_Young]

^ Yes. If you do a google search you can actually find the outline. The producers of the show intended Trevor Fehrman who played Elias in "Clerks II" as Young Bruce Wayne.

 

[BDJ]

Also, wasn't there a (dubious) flirtation with doing a Smallville style series for Dick Grayson? Leading up to the point where his parents are killed and he's taken in by Bruce Wayne. Whatever happened to that show?

 

[Admiral_Young]

That was a planned spin off series called "The Graysons". It was subsequently cancelled after it was announced. There was a lot of fan backlash against it and rightfully so as it sounded atrocious.

 

[JaxsBrokenHeart]

As far as DC properties, I was always surprised WB/CW never tried to develop a Teen Titans production. The potential televised nature of it (possible romances between characters, teen angst, young hip casting) seems like their bread and butter.

 

[Deckerd]

Wasn't Smallville rubbish though? After the first season when the production team were still trying, I mean.

 

[od0_ital]

Didn't Lana have a boyfriend in the third or fourth season that was supposed to be Bruce Wayne, but they changed the guy's name since Batman Begins was in pre-production, or something?

 

[Servo]

Didn't Lana have a boyfriend in the third or fourth season that was supposed to be Bruce Wayne, but they changed the guy's name since Batman Begins was in pre-production, or something?

The guy you're thinking of was Adam Knight. I don't think there was ever an intention of him being Bruce Wayne, or anything to do with Batman, but the internet being what it is, people took the name "Knight" a bit too literally and ran with it.

 

[Greg Cox]

As far as DC properties, I was always surprised WB/CW never tried to develop a Teen Titans production. The potential televised nature of it (possible romances between characters, teen angst, young hip casting) seems like their bread and butter.

There was a RAVEN show in development awhile back. Not sure what's going on there.

And, of course, there was MERCY POINT, the aborted Aquaman series.

 

[Christopher]

^Wasn't that Mercy Reef? I think Mercy Point was the short-lived hospital-in-space series with Joe Morton.

 

[Greg Cox]

^Wasn't that Mercy Reef? I think Mercy Point was the short-lived hospital-in-space series with Joe Morton.

Oops! You're right!

 

[Temis the Vorta]

So would this series inevitably be on the CW? In which case, I fear for young Bats...he'll spend all his time in teenage-romantic-angst-hell and have no time for chasing evildoers. Also the audience might be confused, expecting that a bat-addled boy has got to have something to do with vampries.

But the same concept on, say, FX or TNT could be a blast.

 

[Harvey]

It's too bad they never made the proposed Dick Grayson series, where all he would do is travel around with his parents and perform in the circus. It's such a bizarre idea for a Batman spin-off that it would be interesting to see it on screen -- interesting to see in the same way that you can't look away from a train-wreck, that is.

 

[Christopher]

Like someone said above, this is a very old idea; a Bruce Wayne series was what Millar & Gough were originally going to do before the idea was scuttled and reworked into Smallville. If someone online is reporting this as a recent proposal, they probably read something about the idea from a decade ago and misunderstood.

Personally, I would've rather seen the proposed Bruce Wayne series instead of Smallville. A version of the Batman mythos with the costumes and nicknames left out would've been easier to make work than a version of Superman without the flights and supervillains. No need to retcon Kryptonite into a mutagen, for one thing.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Adam Knight was indeed intended to be Bruce Wayne in a two part story arch. He would have been a love interest for Lana and he and Clark would antagonize each other before becoming "friends" at the end of the second episode. The so called Bat Embargo scrapped these plans and Bruce was turned into the aforementioned character.

Besides which we later saw the "Smallville" writers plans for a Bruce Wayne type character in the form of their version of Ollie Queen. I'm for one glad WB reinforced the embargo because Smallville would have butchered the character.


The "new" Batman TV series as I mentioned before isn't happening folks. It was a faux report by a website that is known to have questionable sources and "reporting" methods. I get a bit anal when it comes to that particular website because so many fans get suckered into their "reports" which 90 percent of the time turn out to be false or wrong.

I do believe that there was brief mention last year of a plans for a new "Batman Animated Series" that will air after the completion of "Batman Brave and the Bold" but that was only talk and there hasn't been any news regarding the progress of development since that initial story.