Fox’s Gotham TV series, which already has a series order, now has its Commissioner Gordon. He’ll be played by Ben McKenzie (pictured at left), who also portrayed a cop in Southland and voiced Batman in the animated version of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One. Well, that’s a uniquely relevant resume.
THR broke the news and offers a new synopsis of the series:
Gotham‘s Gordon is a rookie detective for Gotham City Open Police Department’s Homicide Squad. A college football star and a war hero, Gordon was fast-tracked through the GCPD ranks. He’s brave, energetic and honest. Driven to live up to the classical virtues of a father he barely knew, he’s an idealistic soul, to the point of naiveté. That virtue is tempered by analytical intelligence and an ambitious alpha male ego — he’ll back up his naive ideals with action.
McKenzie will be joined by Donal Logue as Detective Harvey Bullock. Fox chairman Kevin Reilly has also said Gotham will include a very young (“around 12”) Bruce Wayne and classic villains like The Joker, Catwoman, and Penguin. What, no Clock King?
Banner courtesy TNT.
Ben’s a good actor who has shown a lot of range of emotion from The OC to Southland. I’m sure there’s gonna be a need to show off that range with all of Gotham’s crazies running around. You officially have my attention FOX. Don’t fuck it up.
Won’t be corrupted by Gotham fat cats.
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Nice.
And true.
My first thought on reading this was, “Well Fox, let’s make this a small OC reunion and bring in Rachel Bilson when you eventually need a Selina Kyle.”
It would make absolutely no sense if they really are going to have a 12 year old Bruce, but I stand by my statement.
Anything that involves any sort of OC reunion is a good idea.
This is an objective fact and cannot be disproven.
It would make absolutely no sense if they really are going to have a 12 year old Bruce.
———–
My thoughts exactly
I’m 100% down with this. He absolutely changed my mind on him in Southland. Also, Donal Logue! The only question I have is why the WB let this get away.
They aren’t, studios sell the airing rights all the time.
As Warner Bros owns the characters, yeah they did. I understand how shows are aired, I’m just curious why Warner Bros wouldn’t air this show on the WB with their other show, Arrow.
Oh, I still call it the WB because I’m old. Ha I see what you meant. I meant the CW. Geez, remember when it was the WB?
But if Commissioner Gordon can deal with the Joker and The Penguin, then why do we need Batman ever?
I assume they’ll be younger versions of themselves before they go full on badguy. I assume they’ll go with the animated series take on The Joker and have him be a contract killer for the mob and show a young Oswald Cobblepot lose his family fortune and turn to crime.
How can this show have Batman’s notable villains and a 12-year-old Bruce? Are they all supposed to be kids, too? Or has Batman been beating up a bunch of old men his entire career?
I always thought they were old men.
This is going to start out like an ambitious idea like “Smallville” but its going to end up a bastardized insult to the mythos its based off of, like “Smallville”.
Smallville never started out ambitious.
Maybe it will follow the Arrow model and be fucking awesome.
You’d hope the story is really good for an idea like “Batman essentially without Batman” to get picked up.
There’s a comic called Gotham Central, which this basically sounds like it’s influenced by, which was all about the GCPD. Gordon wasn’t in it much, it focused on detectives and such, and Batman only appeared in the book as a silhouette at times or as a background character. It was really good.
I think the idea of cops protecting a city like Gotham from the freaks that popped up as a result of Batman’s appearance is interesting.
The problem is…. this is all set before Batman. So it’s just another cop show. But I assume we’ll still get some freaks, otherwise there’d be no point in doing a DC show.
Call me crazy, but this is intriguing. I bet the first scene will be the death of Tom and Martha. Joker and Pengiun in the early days? Love Donal Logue. He’ll bring some humor to the role. Wonder who they get to play the mobsters next.
You know what I don’t need to see recreated ever again? The death of Bruce’s parents
THOSE FUCKING PEARLS.
I thought Gordon was older than Harvey Bullock.
I’m withholding judgement until I see the moustache.
GOTHAM CITY HERE WE COME! RIGHT BACK WHERE WE STARTED FROM!
I’m excited to see Fox’s sexy, hip take on the Penguin.