Gotham Series Reboot In The Works?
A reboot of the prequel series Gotham may be on the way!
This article is more than 2 years old
With Matt Reeves’ The Batman on the way, four classic Batman villains appearing in The Suicide Squad, the June and July releases of both chapters of the animated Batman: The Long Halloween, Diedrich Bader (Napoleon Dynamite) voicing Batman on Harley Quinn, Iain Glen playing Bruce Wayne on HBO Max’s Titans along with all the Batman-adjacent characters on the series like Dick Grayson and Jason Todd, multiple versions of Batman reported as appearing in the upcoming The Flash, Ben Affleck’s Batman and Jared Leto’s Joker finally getting a face-to-face in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, the CW’s Batwoman, and even the recently announced The Batman spin-off series, at least one thing is achingly, painfully clear — there just aren’t enough Batman adaptations, so it’s time for a Gotham reboot.
At least, that’s the news coming out of We Got This Covered. The site credits unnamed sources dropping the word that a Gotham reboot is being considered for HBO Max. As WGTC notes, Gotham started out as a crime drama focusing on a young Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) just starting out as a detective in the titular city, partnered with Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue). Meanwhile, the Matt Reeves series spinning out of The Batman seems to be focusing on the less “super” aspects of Gotham mythology as well and it would be strange for both series to co-exist.
Gotham premiered on Fox in 2014 with David Mazouz playing the young Bruce Wayne, who witnesses his parents’ murders in the first episode, as does Selina Kyle (Camren Bicondova) from the safety of a nearby fire escape. The iconic scene is inescapable, and we’ll doubtless see it again in the event of a Gotham reboot. In the world of Gotham, some of the leading figures of Batman’s mythology have surprising origins. For example Edward Nygma, aka The Riddler (Cory Michael Smith) enters the narrative as a forensic scientist working for the Gotham PD. Oswald Cobblepot (Robin Lord Taylor), destined to become the ruthless crime boss The Penguin, is a low-level and often mocked thug.
While Gotham begins as a series wanting to be much more grounded in reality, eventually it embraces its comic book roots and gets a lot crazier. By the penultimate season, it even delves into the supernatural, introducing Ra’s al Ghul (Alexander Siddig). By the final season, Gotham is a post-apocalyptic war zone, with different gangs ruling over different parts of the city. The finale jumps ahead to the future, where we finally see characters like Batman and the Joker in their fully-realized, and much more colorful, glory. A Gotham reboot would need to turn the clock back once more, and it would be interesting to see whether it would try the more realistic, grounded approach to the bitter end, or if it turns up the dial on the clowns and demons’ heads from day 1.
We’ll have to wait and see whether or not this Gotham reboot ever sees fruition. In the meantime between the TV series, films, video games, comics, and even the upcoming Batman Unburied podcast, there should be enough Batman related media to sate anyone’s desires.
