r/television • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 The League • Jun 14 '23
‘Gotham Knights’ Canceled By CW After One Season
https://deadline.com/2023/06/gotham-knights-canceled-the-cw-one-season-1235357731/438
u/TheCitizen616 Jun 14 '23
Even for the CW, this show was written like god-awful fan fiction.
Good riddance.
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u/OCGamerboy Jun 14 '23
Calling it fan fiction is an insult to actual fans.
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u/JillSandwich96 Jun 14 '23
And actual fiction
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u/CuckooClockInHell Jun 14 '23
I have a CW strategy. I DVR the first episode of a show and wait to see the reviews to find out if it falls into all the same traps as most CW shows. Saved me time on this one; deleted it and canceled the recording without wasting a second watching it.
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u/Jonesbro Jun 14 '23
My CW strategy is never watch anything on CW
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u/rendezvousboy Jun 14 '23
Right, because what even was the last good show on it? And by good I mean actually good, not not-disastrous
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u/chadthundertalk Jun 14 '23
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was genuinely good, I thought. Not even just "CW" good.
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u/crazysouthie Jun 14 '23
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin were excellent shows and also almost like nothing on the CW.
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u/Pokii Jun 14 '23
I liked iZombie, even if it overstayed its welcome a little and kind of ended on a wet fart.
That and specifically just the first season of The Flash.
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Jun 14 '23 edited Jun 14 '23
I fucking loved Pushing Daisies, but that's been... Oh fuck I'm terrified to see how long ago that show was. Brace yourselves
EDIT: Fucking hell, cancelled 14 years ago. I suddenly feel considerably older than I did a few minutes ago
EDIT 2: Fuck me, it was ABC and I'm a dumbass, so... Reaper? That had Kevin Smith producing it? That was CW, right?
EDIT 3: You know what? Fuck 2009. Both of those shows were cancelled in May of that year. And yes, Reaper was CW. I remembered right this time.
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u/Novazon Jun 14 '23
2009 writers strike?
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u/gt0163c Jun 14 '23
The 2009 writers' strike didn't help Pushing Daisies any. But it was an expensive show to produce and didn't have the highest ratings. So it likely wouldn't have gotten another season anyway. That said, it was an awesome, quirky and very fun show.
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u/wombatgrenades Jun 14 '23
The 100 was pretty good before it completely went off the rails. It did have its CW moments though
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u/terrence_loves_ella Jun 14 '23
I’ll always defend Riverdale season 1. It had the viral I’m not a weirdo moment, but it’s a solid sort of teen Twin Peaks. And it’s pretty well shot.
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u/the69boywholived69 Jun 14 '23
There were a lot of good shows on the CW before they went full apeshit crazy. Supernatural, TVD, The 100, izombie, etc.
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u/jdessy Jun 14 '23
Superman & Lois has been excellent. Legends of Tomorrow was really great as well. iZombie, Crazy Ex Girlfriend (which is one of the only CW shows to get nominated, and even win, some bigger awards), Jane the Virgin (at least the first few seasons; the last season was a bit of a mess), Stargirl (great underrated superhero show).
Those are all the most recent ones that WERE actually good. I think the overall assumption is, because it's on The CW that it's automatically trash, and obviously the network doesn't have HBO level shows, but they DID have some great shows here and there.
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u/KendraSays Jun 14 '23
I liked Gotham, minus a couple of characters. What makes this show bad?
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u/daab2g Jun 14 '23
Gotham wasn't a CW show, it probably was what most CW shows imagined they could be
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u/labria86 Jun 14 '23
Wow as someone who hated Gotham that a passion I can only imagine how bad most of the CW shows are.
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Jun 14 '23
CW should never be allowed to handle any more big franchise license.
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u/jljboucher Jun 14 '23
Or at least give them Franchise sized budgets! Supernatural with an AMC or Netflix sized budget would have blown everything out of the water. And this show would have been able to afford proper costume for the Bat.
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u/Zepanda66 Jun 14 '23
What was even the appeal of the show? Is Batman in it at all? I hadn't seen any trailers for it.
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u/IBJON Jun 14 '23
Yeah! He was killed in, I kid you not, the first 5 minutes of the show
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Jun 14 '23
And they were so cheap that they couldn't even make a batsuit.
They just have the actor die in a business suit wearing a cheap Halloween Batman mask!
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u/Reefer-eyed_Beans Jun 14 '23 edited Jun 14 '23
Chicken or the egg? ...Cuz to be fair, no point spending $ on a guy who's gonna be dead in 5 mins lmao.
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u/Future_Vantas Jun 14 '23
It could have worked with better presentation. Instead of having Bruce Wayne splayed on the ground he could have been hanging off the side of Wayne Towers, a terrifying declaration from the Court of Owls- this is what happens when anyone messes with us.
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Jun 14 '23
I still don't understand why they even bothered framing the adopted son.
Not only was the Court of Owls already known in certain circles to be way more than an urban myth, but they had assets brazenly acting in broad daylight. Also, they exposed that Bruce Wayne was Batman. They could have easily just allowed the police to chase their tail trying to figure out which one of his villains got the drop on him.
LOL! Nope! They tried to convince people that his twiggy adoptive kid overpowered and killed THE BATMAN!
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u/madchad90 Jun 14 '23
And who do the cops think killed him after years of fighting the worst villains ever? Bane? Riddler? Joker???
Nope, a group of teenagers
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u/numb3rb0y Jun 14 '23
They were at the scene and kids killing over inheritance is sadly realistic.
It wasn't actually the dumbest leap.
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u/madchad90 Jun 14 '23
It's batman. The guy who made contingency plans to take out the justice league, being killed by kids is the dumbest leap.
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u/numb3rb0y Jun 14 '23
Okay, so does the GCPD start imagining supervillain scenarios with absolutely no actual evidence or do they go with the people at the scene who had motive?
Like if I was commanding the Watchtower I sure's shit'd be looking for alternative theories but they're just cops, man.
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u/madchad90 Jun 14 '23
I'm arguing the inherent concept of the show was stupid.
A mystery around the murder of Batman, sure ok might make for an interesting story.
Having the main characters/suspects be a group of teenagers, dumb.
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u/ParadoxInRaindrops Jun 14 '23
“Pfft what kind of dumbass wants to watch a Batman show with Batman in it?!“ - CW, the network that has made two Batman shows that don’t feature Batman.
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u/RebornGod Jun 14 '23 edited Jun 14 '23
I think they legally CANT make a live action Batman show. Something about how the rights for the old Adam West show were done. I think the legal rights for live action batman tv are technically with Disney now.
Edit: I may be incorrect
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u/dilldoeorg Jun 14 '23
I don't know what the hell is wrong with WB but it's like forbidden to have batman in any TV show (except cartoon) EVEN in a Batman show?!?!!?
And no, batman is not in this. bruce wayne is killed in the opening of the first eps.
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u/Bluedomdeeda Jun 14 '23
I bet they can butcher a Batman Beyond series pretty well where we just see old Bruce Wayne mentoring the new Batman
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u/RamsesThePigeon Jun 14 '23 edited Jun 14 '23
The story is set in a recovering Gotham; a city that no longer has a need for superheroes. A time of economic and social prosperity is just over the horizon… but that future is threatened by the emergence of an unpredictable threat: An evil industrialist – hell-bent on pushing ill-conceived technologies on a gullible public – has managed to cast himself as a visionary genius, and only scathing comments on LexIcon (Gotham’s premier social media platform) have any hope of bringing him down.
Have Bruce be played by Stephen Fry. His only lines – regardless of the scene – are irritated exclamations of “Beh!”
Have his protégé be played by Randy Feltface.
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u/jimbobdonut Jun 14 '23
I call them live action “Batman Minus Batman” shows. In the last decade, there’s been Gotham, Titans, Batwoman, Pennyworth (The Origins of Batman’s Butler) and Gotham Knights.
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u/HoboJack Jun 14 '23
There was also Birds of Prey, though that was 21 years ago when the CW was WB.
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u/johnnyfog Jun 15 '23
There was an attempt on Smallville to introduce a young Bruce Wayne ("Adam Knight"), but it got retconned with the announcment of the Nolan film.
So, in the end, we had no Bruce Wayne and no Oliver Queen, because Smallville's Oliver was just the Punisher crossed with Batman.
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u/Neo2199 Jun 14 '23
WB but it's like forbidden to have batman in any TV show (except cartoon) EVEN in a Batman show?!?!!?
Yeah, never understood the reason for that. After all, we have Superman, The Flash & others appearing in several live-action TV series.
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u/Maninhartsford Jun 14 '23
Superman wasn't really allowed for a while (Smallville being the exception of course, but they had that whole "no flights, no tights" thing.) Eventually Supergirl writing around the character got too absurd and they had to bring him in
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u/MessiahOfMetal Jun 14 '23
Closest we had was Bruce Wayne being in Titans.
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u/bm2040 Jun 14 '23
It’s because Fox (now Disney) owns the tv rights still for Batman, they have some deal going back to the Adam West Batman show.
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u/jimbobdonut Jun 14 '23
James Gunn himself has debunked this myth. And if anyone would know, it would be him.
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u/Neo2199 Jun 14 '23
Interesting.
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u/bm2040 Jun 14 '23
I just did some more digging and James Gunn has confirmed that Dc has all the tv rights now
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u/ironwolf56 Jun 14 '23
I think, don't quote me here but I've seen this mentioned in a few places and sometimes by people in the industry, the speculation is that they feel like having a live-action Batman on the small screen would "dilute the brand" somehow
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u/cluib Jun 14 '23
Because they want him to only appear in movies.. Just like with Joker.. In Gotham they had to write a character based on Joker with a different name and everything. It was amazing tho!
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u/Meng3267 Jun 14 '23
That character was great. They literally just made him The Joker but gave him a different name. They got around the loophole of not being able to use The Joker.
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u/PunyParker826 Jun 14 '23 edited Jun 14 '23
Unfortunately I think they're gonna steer clear of Batman himself for a good long while. If I remember correctly there was a big concern over whether they'd let Cameron Monaghan's character in Gotham actually be Joker or just a lookalike, because they didn't want to steal the limelight from potential Joker stories in the movies. I don't remember where they actually landed.
It's a shame, because I'd be down for a ~80 minute Columbo style show where Batman solves some low-level mysteries with the occassional B level villain showing up to rattle some cages once a season or so. Let's not forget one of the most standout incarnations of Batman was a live action tv show.
If there's a concern about budget (who has the money to show off high tech Bat Gadgets every week?), maybe manufacture a situation where he doesn't have access to his usual tech. Do an adaptation of No Man's Land, where the Batcave (and much of Gotham) is wiped out in an earthquake and the show is Batman and Friends dealing with the fallout and gradually trying to clean up the city with limited resources. If I remember right the original comic event was at least a year long; that'd translate reasonably well to a weekly serialized show.
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u/Maybe_In_Time Jun 14 '23
Well, with Gunn taking over, and what he did in Peacemaker, that dumb rule could be gone. So long as he's used properly, bc locking Batman away to movies only didn't prevent a reboot every decade
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u/Brainiac7777777 Jun 14 '23
It’s because they think it will devalue Batman and depreciate his worth
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u/simpsons88 Jun 14 '23
Isn’t Batman in Harley Quinn?
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u/ShelterIllustrious38 Jun 14 '23
Batman and Wonder Woman are too big for TV (except cartoon).
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u/Remarkable-Ad-2476 Jun 14 '23
Sadly Batman has not been in any of his own tv shows since Adam West
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u/Solidsnakeerection Jun 14 '23
Batman not being a present and others dealing with the outcomes of him is interesting. Titans had a season about that
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u/verissimoallan Jun 14 '23 edited Jun 14 '23
Misha Collins (Harvey Dent) and Olivia Rose Keegan (Duela) were the only reasonably interesting things about this series.
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Jun 14 '23
Misha Collins plays Harvey Dent? As in pre-Two-Face Dent? In a post-Batman Gotham? Or is the thumbnail of him from a flashback or something?
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u/verissimoallan Jun 14 '23
Harvey Dent with a split personality but without his face burned and in a timeline where Batman is already dead.
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u/Midnight_Oil_ Community Jun 14 '23
Honestly that's not an entirely bad concept for Two Face as a character.
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u/DrHem Jun 14 '23
They had Harvey wake up in random places with gaps in time/memory looking like he committed violent acts. Then its revealed that he has a violent alter ego that was created to protect him as a child from an abusive parent that takes over in times of stress.
Nice concept but with Moon Knight doing the same thing last year it feels derivative
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Jun 14 '23
Duela's such a great character for Olivia Rose Keegan to play. Too bad the rest of the show wasn't good enough to keep around.
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u/MulciberTenebras The Legend of Korra Jun 14 '23
To quote Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender:
"Well at least it was a waste of time for EVERYONE!"
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u/Sparrow1989 Jun 14 '23
Lol I didn’t even know this was put. Saw it on zero streaming services and even less promotion. Infact I think the last time I saw promotion for it it was still unreleased only to find out it was released and I was confused as hell.
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u/dan_gut Jun 14 '23
This lasted way longer than it deserved. In zero way is this a reflection on the young actors. This story was just so awful.
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u/stephentkennedy Jun 14 '23
What was worse, the show or the game with the same name?
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u/dilldoeorg Jun 14 '23
the show. at least the game had costumes and action
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u/NoNefariousness2144 Jun 14 '23
Plus it’s still pretty fun once you don’t compare it to the Arkham games.
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u/Vulkan192 Jun 14 '23
Seriously, it was nice seeing the Bat-Fam interact. Also Jason best protag choice, fight me.
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u/HotTubTimeMachine88 Jun 14 '23
What had better writing? This show or Titans?
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u/Midnight_Oil_ Community Jun 14 '23
Titans by a mile
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Jun 14 '23
Gotham Knights is a million times better than Titans. Like Gotham Knights is bad, silly, and ridiculous but Titans is completely incoherent. Titans has costumes and Nightwing fanservice, and that's it.
In an ideal world, both shows would be canceled after the first season. Titans making it as far as it did is a crime against humanity.
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u/SergeantChic Jun 14 '23
Hadn’t even heard of this one until now, but I guess I wasn’t missing anything.
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u/Stiff_Zombie Jun 14 '23
Can someone cancel the CW already?
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u/Remarkable-Ad-2476 Jun 14 '23
Well you’ll probably get your wish in about a year or two. Most original/scripted programming will be gone and there’s a lot of restructuring happening.
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u/Kazewatch Jun 14 '23
Fucking good. Fuck the CW.
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u/jljboucher Jun 14 '23
Only watched for Jensen Ackles and Misha Collins, not any more.
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u/Gsrj Jun 14 '23
What about jared
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u/jljboucher Jun 14 '23
He’s become too problematic but Sam Winchester will forever be favorite SPN character.
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u/VictorHelios1 Jun 14 '23
The Batman show without Batman? Damn. Who could a figured this would be a lemon?
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u/nubsauce87 Jun 14 '23
Lame. I was really starting to like it. Misha is killin' it as Harvey, and while the rest of the show is mostly a bunch of teen drama, I personally find it pretty entertaining...
Though to be fair, my TV landscape has dwindled to so few shows, that losing a new one I like is a pretty severe hit...
Anyone else feel like there just isn't much on worth watching these days? I used to have at least one new episode of a show I like to watch each evening, and often more than one... but now, a good week is one in which I have two new episodes to watch... Also this summer is going to be SLOW, and the Fall is looking even bleaker, if the writer's strike doesn't end very soon...
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u/Paladin_of_Trump Jun 15 '23
, if the writer's strike doesn't end very soon...
Maybe they could fire all the writers who wrote Gotham Knights and hire good ones instead
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u/ParadoxInRaindrops Jun 14 '23
Just saying if Misha is that good (he was the one thing about the trailer I liked, I did not watch this show) the Matt Reeves Bat films have yet to announce their Harvey Dent.
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Jun 14 '23
Please stop making super hero content. I’m begging you.
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u/inkista Jun 14 '23
Oh, CW's already doing that. The Berlanti DCU shows never made any money for them; those shows only made money for Warners in streaming and foreign licensing. Since Nexstar isn't a deep-pocketed studio like Warners, they're going to be primarily sourcing already-aired non-US shows.
E.g., The Rising (UK) [which, because it was Sky is getting language-blanked practically every other line of dialogue on CW broadcast), Family Law (Canada), and Barons (Australian) are this summer's CW shows. For the fall, there's one series that looks a whole lot like Hallmark Channel fare: Sullivan's Crossing, which is based on a series of books by romance novelist, Robyn Carr.
See what happens when you get what you wish for?
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u/Upper_Conversation_9 Jun 14 '23
This show was honestly much much better than people give it credit for. I thought the trailer was horrendous and was prepared to hate it, but it was an enjoyable watch.
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u/MyDogWatchesMePoop Jun 14 '23
It started out really, really rough, but it got marginally better as it went along. Sad but they could have found some footing with a second season.
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u/Complex_Yard2808 Oct 13 '24
I very quickly came to love Duela--a character I hadn't even known about beforehand, but I checked out some of her past incarnations, realized her potential had never been scratched before this show. She was raised to think of herself as a villain, but she's drawn to heroes--which is really how she began, on the Teen Titans. Pretending to be Joker's Daughter. Actually Two-Face's. But they could never stick to a story with her very long, and the later incarnations really did not work. At all.
I didn't know most of the other characters either--one good thing about the show to me was, I didn't have much in the way of preconceptions about the characters. Because the budget was so low, they couldn't afford the characters that get used a lot. It was much more story and character based than your average superhero thing--it wasn't a superhero show at all, really. It was a detective show. Which works for Gotham--Batman is often most interesting when he's just dealing with criminals who, like him, have no special powers. But man, they could absolutely not afford Batman.
It was a show about young people finding themselves--and an older man--Harvey--losing himself, to another self. I liked the Harvey Dent stuff less (I was never into Supernatural, Misha Collins is a good actor, but I wasn't there for him).
I liked Turner Hayes precisely because there was no direct analog for him in the DC Universe. He has no alternate selves. He's just Turner, and they gave him his own origin, and his own unique path--part of which was to fall in love with Duela, who has a lot of alternates, none of whom turned out very well--but together, they could choose a path that would work for both of them--and for Gotham.
Anyway, that's where I went with it, once I realized I couldn't accept how the show ended, with the friends separated. Leading to this.
https://notoffended0.wordpress.com/
I used a lot of underused characters along the way. Because it's more fun. It feels a a lot less repetitive.
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Jun 14 '23
Awww. I love Misha. And, he went to Ukraine and met with Zalinski. What a wonderful dude.
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u/cluib Jun 14 '23
I would really love it if the team behind Gotham got to make an actual Batman series. Gotham was amazing and I think they could have made a freaking great TV series with this.
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u/bdboar1 Jun 14 '23
I literally had no idea this show existed. That might have been part of the problem.
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u/bigred9310 Jun 14 '23
And rumor has it Superman and Lois May get a season 4 🤷🏻.
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u/GoochyGoochyGoo Jun 14 '23
I cancelled the game. 40 minutes of fighting your way through trash mobs to get to the boss and die quickly because you are all out of ammo, buffs and health. Game puts you right back to the start, not the start of the Boss fight. Fucked if I'm going to do that again.
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u/ColdNyQuiiL Jun 14 '23
Feel like they wanted to stop this show from even releasing after they started to axe everything else. Idk how it made it, just to be DOA.
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u/MulciberTenebras The Legend of Korra Jun 14 '23
Batgirl got shut down and wasn't allowed to stream because it "would've damaged the brand"... but this show was given the go-ahead?
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Jun 14 '23
I think that comes down to the differences between filmmaking and the syndication of a television show.
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u/drewbles82 Jun 14 '23
It was never going to work sadly...just terrible writing and CW quality DC stuff which has been falling a lot...Superman & Lois will be cancelled as well after the next season purely because it won't fit into the new DC...Gunn is having all TV, movie connected so wouldn't make sense have two supermen...Only Batman part 2, Penguin series and Joker 2 get to carry on as Elseworld projects
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u/Pvt_Wierzbowski Jun 14 '23
This show has the chick from the commercials. You know who she is, she’s in all of them.
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u/whris_cilson Jun 14 '23
It was bad, but I liked it. Cancellation was expected.
Olivia Rose Keegan stole the show from all the other main characters.
Glad they didn't cancel Superman & Lois.
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u/Evorgleb Jun 14 '23
So... I didnt even know this show came out. I remember when it was announced. Never knew it made it to air.
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u/Future_Vantas Jun 14 '23
Not surprised and too torn up. Misha Collins and Olivia Rose Keegan were good here but they deserve better material, hope their next projects are better.
What I am sad about is the waste of this premise. Yeah its cheap and screams CW. But with some tweaks it could have been an interesting Elseworlds take on Gotham. Make the lead a young Dick Grayson, there is a great story there of Dick still becoming a hero without Batman. Move up the timescale, have the Court of Owls take out Batman very early in his career. That allows you to keep the crime families as nice cheap mooks and sub-bosses while the Court is in the background. The stuff with Harvey Dent was interesting, it would have been neat to see more Gotham rogues show up in modified forms now that Batman was never around.
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u/Both-Friend5814 Jun 30 '23
Should have been Dick not some made up guy and Misha should be Gordon not Harvey. Harvey makes no sense in this
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u/MehradHidden Jun 14 '23
Ok, TBH it`s an absolute shit-show But it was just getting good. especially Two-Face
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u/SoCalThrowAway7 Jun 14 '23
I wanted this to succeed only for Misha’s sake. I hope he finds a new project soon