Gotham and Pennyworth Creators: Matt Reeves Will Have an Easier Time Making a Great Show

Pennyworth is back on the air, meaning that since 2014, when the Gotham pilot first premiered on FOX, writer/producers Danny Cannon and Bruno Heller have been working with the heroes and villains of Gotham City and beyond. While Pennyworth centers on the younger years of Bruce Wayne’s butler and surrogate father Alfred Pennyworth, taking place in an alternate London, Heller and Cannon also did Gotham, which was a show centered around James Gordon and the Gotham City Police Department. Fast forward to this summer, when news broke that The Batman filmmaker Matt Reeves was set to launch a new series for HBO Max, set in the universe of his film.

The series, Gotham PD, will center on…well, James Gordon and the Gotham City Police Department. Few details are yet available about the series, but fans immediately seized on how similar it was to Gotham on its face. But that doesn’t bother Heller and Cannon. Instead, they think the creative freedom offered by the project’s high profile and by HBO Max will likely combine to make a pretty special show.

“We were the last big network battle cruiser to leave the harbor, but we were very much a network show,” Heller told ComicBook.com. “I think now that we’ve realized that streaming is the new god, I think Matt’s going to have a much easier time selling the kind of show that we wanted to do, because he’s got a movie with movie stars to back it up.”

Seemingly agreeing that the restrictions of network TV were a hindrance to certain elements of Gotham, Cannon added, “It’s going ot be truer to the nastiness of what Gotham should really be, I guess.”

When the series was announced, the release included a statement from Reeves, who said, “This is an amazing opportunity, not only to expand the vision of the world I am creating in the film, but to explore it in the kind of depth and detail that only a longform format can afford — and getting to work with the incredibly talented Terence Winter, who has written so insightfully and powerfully about worlds of crime and corruption, is an absolute dream.”

A year after the explosive events of Pennyworth‘s first season, England finds itself embroiled in a devastating civil war, with the powerful, neo-fascist Raven Union, led by Lord Harwood (Jason Flemyng) threatening to control the entire country.North London remains one of the few resistance holdouts remaining.It’s here in the West End Neutral Zone, that we find Alfred Pennyworth. After years in the British Army, his training with the SAS has taught him to be a cynical optimist – expecting the worst, but knowing that he can handle it.Now running The Delaney, a black-market Soho club that welcomes everyone, regardless of their politics, Alfred, with his SAS mates, Deon “Bazza” Bashford (Hainsley Lloyd Bennett) and Wallace “Daveboy” MacDougal (Ryan Fletcher), is now in search of a way out – before London, and his country, burns itself to the ground.And he’s got his eye on America.

Pennyworth debuts new episodes on Epix every Sunday.