Fox Chairman Kevin Reilly On GOTHAM

The show will start with a young Batman-to-be, at the age of 12, but the Fox Chairman doesn't rule out the possibility of a time-skip. Reilly added, "This is all of the classic Batman characters, with a young Bruce Wayne, with Detective Gordon before he’s Commissioner Gordon, with the Penguin, with the Riddler, and with the Joker. All of those characters are going to arc and become who they are. I’ve read the script. It’s really good. It’s going to be this operatic soap that has a slightly larger-than-life quality." He also added, "We're not starting in that world where the villains are in costume. You see markers for it that are kind of delicious. You begin to see the evolution of the eccentricities that become those characters, but you really sort of arc there. We don't start out in capes and costumes." Fans will complain that this sounds like Smallville, but the premise for Smallville was always great. The fault resided in the poor execution of all that tremendous potential. Fox has a much better track record with their genre television shows than say, their genre movies, so I remain cautiously optimistic. Personally, I'm hoping we get a time-kip right away and the show parallels Detective Jim Gordon fighting a growing criminal element in Gotham and Bruce traveling the globe, training with various martial arts masters and escape artists. Perhaps the people and criminal element Bruce encounters across the globe have some sort of connection to events back in Gotham? That would certainly be in keeping with the theme of the story in Batman Begins. It's also reported that WB wants the show to be 22 episodes but Fox hasn't decided on an exact number.