Gritty ‘Gotham’ Trailer Shows Batman Prequel’s Capacity for Tension
“This is not a city for nice guys,” actor Donal Logue’s character, Detective Harvey Bullock, says midway through the trailer for Gotham, Fox’s forthcoming Batman origin-story series. It’s a gross understatement, since the clip had previously shown a young Bruce Wayne’s parents shot at close range and images of various characters with bleeding heads. It also shows some of Gotham City’s villains in their pre-spandex years, including Penguin (who’s holding an umbrella, of course), Catwoman, Riddler and Poison Ivy, as well as the budding relationship between the orphaned Wayne and the future Commissioner James Gordon, played by Ben McKenzie. Jada Pinkett-Smith also appears as a criminal named Fish Mooney.
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The show’s executive producer, Bruno Heller (The Mentalist), wrote the pilot, which fellow Executive Producer Danny Cannon (Nikita, CSI) directed. The show is set to debut in the fall.
Fox broke promo tradition and aired the Gotham trailer during the season premiere of 24: Live Another Day this week. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the network typically waits to share its trailers until after it has shown them to the ad buyers it has scheduled meetings with next week.
Although the premiere date for Gotham has not been set, it’s due to air in the neighborhood of six months before Ben Affleck dons the Caped Crusader’s trademark cowl in Batman Vs. Superman. That film was supposed to come out in July but has since been pushed back to May 6th, 2016.