Today IGN caught up with showrunner Bruno Heller at the TCA's 14 to once again talk about the upcoming Batman-prequel TV series Gotham! The showrunner once again reiterates that The Joker will appear at some point but won't be referenced during every episode like previously reported. As well as going onto reveal Batman baddie Hugo Strange will indeed make an appearance during season one! And also that Season One took some inspiration from the hugely successful game franchise Arkham (Asylum, City, Origins, Knight)
"Hugo Strange is going to pop up because we're going to start dealing with how Arkham was created and why Arkham was created in the way that it was so, yeah, absolutely. It's a Season One thing because in our telling of it the way Arkham was created and the why and how is one of the causes of the particular criminal climate in Gotham that allowed Batman to happen. The revolving door of Arkham is both a brilliant narrative device because it allows you to -- you don't have to kill people off, you can just put them in cold storage -- but if you're telling the story from the start you kind of have to explain, 'What the f***? Why don't you make that place a place people don't escape from?' We're going to explain why it is the way it is and Hugo Strange is a big part of that."
He does reveal two changes coming to the Batman villains Poison Ivy and Two-Face. Apparently Harvey Dent will be much older then Bruce Wayne unlike Selina Kyle and Ivy Pepper who are all still children:
"We're playing Harvey Dent slightly older. He's more Gordon's age in this telling. One of the things to avoid in order not to tell a high school story -- which would be great, but it''s a different show on a different network at a different time that I would not be a part of. But he will go back to school and villains will be part of that world."
He then goes onto talk about the name change they gave Ivy. Her name in the comics is Pamela Isley but here she is simply a foster child named Ivy Pepper:
"It’s really about being able to tell the secret histories of these stories. If you just re-tell stories exactly as they’ve been told before, whilst you’re being true to the created mythology, you’re not really adding anything to it. So you have to find ways of finding more. And in this case, we’ve set up a situation in which Ivy Pepper, her mom is sick, her dad is dead… She’s going to go to the orphanage. And she’s a nice young girl; relatively undamaged. And she will find people to adopt her. And then we will start on the Poison Ivy story that people are familiar with."
With all the Batman pre-villains the showrunner does stress that season one really is "The Rise of The Penguin" more then any other villain. Hugo Strange or Harvey Dent have yet to be cast.
Gotham premieres on FOX this Fall
