DC Releases Gotham Promo Clips

Gotham, the new DC TV series debuting on Fox on September 22, is a dark take on Batman’s supporting cast, focusing on the city and the origins of some of his best-known villains. We won’t see the hero himself, since Bruce Wayne at this point is a little kid; instead, young detective James Gordon (Ben McKenzie) in a corrupt setting is our focus. To explain the concept, DC has released this three-minute promotional video first look:

“This is not a comic book world… it’s a mythic world, it’s a dramatic world full of adventure and color and sex and violence and fun,” says writer Bruno Heller. (One of those things seems not quite to belong with the rest.)

They tease “meeting the Joker for the first time” a good deal here, a role that hasn’t yet (as far as I know) been cast. It’s pretty dark for me, but I’d like to see what two of the primary actors do: Donal Logue (playing Harvey Bullock) has been a favorite since his sitcom Grounded for Life, and Jada Pinkett Smith as new character mob boss Fish Mooney seems intriguing.

There are two shorter (30-second) promos, focused mostly on cutting together visuals. One is on character mythology:

The other talks about the tone of the world: