Epix And Gotham’s Bruno Heller Announce New Batman Prequel Series “Pennyworth”
by Erik Amaya
Even as Gotham preps for its fifth and final season, show creator Bruno Heller is not done telling stories set before the Bat-Man’s arrival in town.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Heller will produce Pennyworth for premium channel Epix. The ten-episode series will detail Alfred Pennyworth’s life as a former SAS agent and security expert who begins to work for billionaire Thomas Wayne. The series is not a prequel to Gotham, where Alfred is played by Sean Pertwee, but an entirely separate Batman prequel story. Gotham‘s Danny Cannon will also be involved as an executive producer. He will also direct the pilot.
Curiously, Fox-owned assets appear to be missing from the production entities involved in Pennyworth; suggesting that company’s rights to Batman characters on television does not extend to the premium cable space. Not that Heller is particularly interested in telling stories about Batman or any costumed heroes. He said as much during the 2016 Edinburgh Television Festival. “I don’t think superheroes work very well on TV. Probably because of the costume thing,” he said. “TV is about real people and faces, and not so much about magic and the supernatural things.”
A spy-thriller loosely based on Batman characters sounds like the perfect follow-up to Gotham, at least in the way Heller views comic book television.
It is currently unclear when the series will debut on Epix