Hypable participated in a conference call today with Bruno Heller, the executive producer and writer for Fox’s highly anticipated show, Gotham.
Gotham is a brand new drama from Fox that goes somewhere no other TV show has gone before: The city of Gotham before the arrival of Batman, and welcomes classic villains like the Riddler and Poison Ivy. All the villains (and heroes) we know so well had to come from somewhere, and Gotham will explore those origins and more.
What was your thought process on including so many characters in the pilot? And is this going to be a villain of the week type show?
Obviously the demands of opening big mean that we will front load it with lots of characters for fun to indicate where we’re going, but it won’t be villain of the week simply because these are such great villains and their story lines are so big and so epic that it would be short changing them if we did it that way. There are a lot of big characters in that first episode as it rolls on, and other iconic characters will be introduced in a much more measured way.
As a prequel series, what did you look at to draw inspiration from for the series?
For me the immediate attraction of this story is the chance to tell origin stories. Those are always the aspects of superhero legends I enjoy the most and it ties into [certain questions]: How did things get the way they are? This is a world everyone knows, everyone knows who Batman and the Riddler is, etc., so telling their fully fledged adult stories – it’s tough to find a fresh way in. This way you get to learn how things got to be the way they are. And that to me is one of the gifts of good narrative.
Its like seeing pictures of parents before you were born, there’s something fascinating about that period [that you don’t know] and that’s the feeling we were going for.
Shows like Arrow and Smallville have proven that mainstream superhero shows could be successful ventures. How much of an impact did those shows play on the development of Gotham, and would this have been possible 10 years ago?
That’s a good deep question. Both of those shows are WB shows and DC universe is very much a part in WB culture. I’ve been talking with DC for many years before we got to this point and landed on Gotham. You’re probably right, 10 years ago it wouldn’t be possible and I think that’s a combination of the brilliance of what the Nolans did to revitalize the Batman franchise and also the shows you mention. People could see that there’s both an audience and a way of doing that larger than life world on the small screen.
I would say the difference between those shows and this show, is that those are cable shows and this is network and there are slightly different demands there. The analogy would be: those are arena shows and this has to be a stadium show and has to appeal to an even larger audience. It has to appeal to both people who love Batman and love Gotham and also people who have no particular love for the world; you just have to grab onto the strength of the stories and characters.
One of the things about working for an old school studio like WB is there’s an institutional culture and memory, both in terms of production design, camera work, and directors who understand how to do this kind of thing. Just like in the 50s we were in a western cycle, we’re in a superhero cycle here.
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