Quite a lot of actors have brought Batman’s iconic butler, Alfred Pennyworth, to life over the years, but we have a new look at the latest portrayal.
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Rotten Tomatoes recently shared a new still from Pennyworth, the upcoming EPIX series that follows a young version of Alfred (Jack Bannon). The still, which you can check out below, sees Alfred wearing a suit jacket while standing near a car.
“It’s really the chance to make him the center of a story and explain that journey: How did he get from being a young SAS soldier to being a butler in America? And it also gives us a chance to create a real world around him, a world in England that fits the whole DC universe,” executive producer Bruno Heller said during the show’s TCA panel. “It’s surprising to all of us the depth and range that you can go to with this character.”
Pennyworth is already being described as “unhinged [and] R-rated”, with Alfred going up against “archetypal villains and classic villains of British literature” while in 1960s Britain. The series will also star Ben Aldridge as Thomas Wayne, as well as Paloma Faith, Jason Fleymyng, and Polly Walker.
“It’s after the war, before things change for good.” showrunner Danny Cannon said of the show’s time period. “You could see the change in the air. Things were happening, culturally, artistically, that — it was an inspiring time, I think, that English people always revisit. So, to say that that was the foundations of which we were starting with and then making it 13 degrees more DC, 13 degrees darker [is when the series] really came alive for us.”
With such a unique time period and character being explored, the show will apparently be drawing inspiration from iconic characters like James Bond and Harry Palmer.
“And both of those guys, and Alfred are basically working class guys doing the job,” Heller told ComicBook.com. “It’s like they’re being told what to do by other people in effect, and they make their own moral path by finding a way to be caught up in this much larger world, unlike the sort of Western heroes who go their own way and have show downs in the street. These are people who answer to a boss and who are getting on a bus in the morning and going to work and coming home again and having to do things they don’t really understand the full implications of what they’re doing. That’s sort of the essence of all of those espionage, spy movies, is that every time, you don’t really know who you’re serving, or whether you’re doing the right thing or the wrong thing. And you have to be able to keep a moral core for yourself without being able to say ‘Yes, I’ve saved the world,’ or ‘I’ve rescued 200 children on the bus that was about to fall into the river.’ It’s much more ambivalent than that.”
What do you think of the newest look at Pennyworth? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!
Pennyworth is set to air on Epix sometime in 2019.
