Gotham Knights television series

[Caretaker]

So, The CW is developing a Gotham Knights television series. The article at TVLine has the details although it appears to be unconnected to the Batwoman series despite having some of the same creatives behind both.

I don't know what to make of this. Another "Batman is gone and Gotham descends into darkness" plot but this time mixed with The Fugitive.

 

[Samurai8472]

So this is going to be a lighter/less bloodier/less foul mouthed version of "Titans" ?

 

[Christopher]

I don't know what to make of this. Another "Batman is gone and Gotham descends into darkness" plot but this time mixed with The Fugitive.

Yeah. Post-Batman shows are their own subgenre by this point. It would be refreshing if we could just have an actual Batman show in live action, but I guess that's off the table as long as WB still wants to make Batman movies.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

It is exhausting, all these Batman shows with no proper Batman.

I'd prefer if a new creative team was tackling this one personally. Though Batwoman is sort of tackling a proto form of this show with its focus on Alice and with the counterfeit revival villians. The premise seems odd to run concurrently with Batwoman so I wonder where that might be going.

 

[JD]

Yeah, it's weird that it sounds like it's going to be another Gotham set series on the CW that isn't connected to Batwoman.
I was a little disappointed when I read that it's about Robin and the kids of Batman's bad guys, I was really hoping for other members of the Batfamily, like Batgirl, Spoiler, Azreal, ect.

 

[M'rk son of Mogh]

No lie, since Gotham Knights is the name of the fictional football team in the comics, I thought this would be a Batman themed "Friday Night Lights" type show when I first saw the title.

 

[Sparkle Fabulosa]

For five seconds I confused this thread with Gotham City Sirens and got excited. Now sad.

 

[Aragorn]

CW orders pilot.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/t...prequels-gotham-knights-cw-pilots-1235086744/

 

[Kor]

Is Batman himself some kind of sacred cow when it comes to doing a weekly live-action television series? Like they are so worried that the format wouldn't do the character justice and thereby tarnish the brand image, or television just doesn't have the requisite level of prestige that the cinema gives the character, or something like that? And so we end up with oddball stuff like Green Arrow as a contrived stand-in for Batman's long and involved history of dealings with the League of Assassins.

Kor

 

[DigificWriter]

Is Batman himself some kind of sacred cow when it comes to doing a weekly live-action television series?

No.

 

[Kor]

No.

Then it's about time they give us Batman on the television screen for the contemporary era, since they have done so with their other cash cow Superman.

Kor

 

[DigificWriter]

Then it's about time they give us Batman on the television screen for the contemporary era, since they have done so with their other cash cow Superman.

Nobody has pitched a purely Batman-centric live-action series in the last decade.

 

[Kor]

Nobody has pitched a purely Batman-centric live-action series in the last decade.

Indeed, it's time for that to change.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

Is Batman himself some kind of sacred cow when it comes to doing a weekly live-action television series? Like they are so worried that the format wouldn't do the character justice and thereby tarnish the brand image, or television just doesn't have the requisite level of prestige that the cinema gives the character, or something like that? And so we end up with oddball stuff like Green Arrow as a contrived stand-in for Batman's long and involved history of dealings with the League of Assassins.

DC/Warner Bros. doesn't like to have competing live-action TV versions of any characters they're doing in the movies. Arrow had to kill off the Suicide Squad when the movie was developed. We didn't get a Superman series until they pretty much gave up on the Cavill films. We got Ray Palmer in a robot suit because the movie people had a prior claim on Ted Kord. The Flash was the exception only because the TV series came first and was a big hit.

The only thing that makes Batman different is that there hasn't been a time in nearly two decades that there hasn't been a Batman film project in development. So TV productions have to tiptoe around him -- we can have young Bruce before the cowl, retired Bruce after the cowl, middle-aged Bruce who's still Batman but never onscreen, Gotham after Batman disappears, etc., but not actual stories about Batman.

So the only way we're likely to see a live-action Batman TV series is if they stop making Batman movies. And that doesn't seem likely to happen in the foreseeable future.

 

[StCoop]

No mention of the John Diggle as Dumbledore series getting a pilot, so hopefully that's dead.

 

[DigificWriter]

DC/Warner Bros. doesn't like to have competing live-action TV versions of any characters they're doing in the movies.

This hasn't been true in a decade.

Arrow had to kill off the Suicide Squad when the movie was developed.

This was explicitly disproven when it was revealed that Arrow was allowed to use Suicide Squad-related characters expressly as an 'audience test' and primer for the original Suicide Squad film.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Nobody has pitched a purely Batman-centric live-action series in the last decade.

How the fuck do you know?

 

[DigificWriter]

How the fuck do you know?

I don't know for certain, but the logical assumption - based on the fact that DC's preemptive TV ban on Batman ended a decade ago- is that we haven't seen any Batman-centric TV projects since the end of that ban because nobody has pitched one.

 

[CorporalClegg]

There's nothing logical about it whatsoever.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I find it hard to imagine HBO and CW would have no interest in making a Batman show. They decided Batgirl, Batwoman and Gotham Knights were just too interesting and lucrative to bother with an actual Batman show?

Marc Guggenheim discusses the Suicide Squad in the Arrowverse at about 4:35 here:

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https://www.cbr.com/arrow-suicide-squad-death-warner-bros/

"You can look at the glass as half-full or half empty," Guggenheim told Entertainment Weekly. "And yes, certainly, if I was so inclined, we could focus on having to kill Deadshot, having to kill Amanda Waller. But the trust is, and this is not bulls—, I look at the glass as half full, because, again, we never in a million years thought we would do as many characters on this show as we did. So from where I’m sitting, it’s nothing but gifts."

"At the end of the day, these are not my characters. These are not Greg’s characters. These are characters we rent out, and we’re very lucky that we get to rent the toys and play with them. Certainly on balance, I think I’d be a dick if I complained about not having access to this character, or having to stop using that character. I’d be a jerk, because I think DC would very well within their rights to go, ‘Well, what about all of these other characters we’ve given you without a problem?’…If DC wants to say, ‘No more Suicide Squad,’ that is absolutely DC’s right and we will work with what we got."

https://www.thewrap.com/with-batman-off-limits-how-some-dc-comics-tv-shows-have-found-a-workaround/

Even getting Gotham City was a herculean effort. “Arrow” showrunner Beth Schwartz told reporters in December that for years they had tried to weave in at least a reference to Gotham City, but outside of a brief Bruce Wayne namedrop, DC and Warner Bros. rebuffed them at every turn. “We tried, so many times,” she said. Caroline Dries, who is spearheading the solo “Batwoman” project, said that, although Warner Bros. has opened up its vault, Batman is “the one where they cut you off.”