From 2014 to 2019, Gotham showed viewers what a Batman show without Batman looked like, as David Mazouz’s Bruce Wayne wasn’t shown suited up as the Caped Crusader until the final seconds of the series finale. The Fox series had a healthy run of 100 episodes spread across five seasons, and during that time, there was also some movement on giving the Superman mythology the same treatment with a Metropolis spinoff. Ultimately nothing ever came of this project, and after hearing Gotham producers Danny Cannon and John Stephens’ explanation for why this was decided, I agree that it was a good call that this Superman prequel didn’t happen.
As part of a comprehensive oral history on Gotham that IGN put together to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the show’s premiere, Cannon recalled how during the wedding of Ben McKenzie and Morena Baccarin (who respectively played James Gordon and Lee Thompkins), he and Stephens were approached by Gotham creator Bruno Heller. He told them that “Warner Bros. wants another DC,” and together they came up with Metropolis, which would have featured Lois Lane and Lex Luthor as its main characters, with the latter being explored in a Breaking Bad-like style. Regarding why Metropolis never made it past the development stage, Cannon said this:
Metropolis didn't go because we kept saying Gotham without Batman works. It's everything around Batman. It creates the world where he will live, right? Metropolis, no Superman. What is Metropolis? Metropolis is the character. Lois Lane was the character, deciding to be a journalist. And there's this crazy fucking guy there who might be a genius called Lex. Fucking great things, right? It's good, but the minute we said ‘no Superman,’ it was like ‘Nah.’
Initially, Danny Cannon and John Stephens thought that Metropolis would have been a good companion show for Gotham, with Cannon saying it was like the “the yin and yang” because “Metropolis is the perfect city, and Gotham was the most imperfect city.” However, as he explained, Gotham was able to work without Batman because with their interpretation of the lore, it’s the craziness in that city that paves the way for Batman to arrive on the scene. Plus, as already mentioned, the adolescent Bruce still played an integral role in Gotham, and viewers got to see what led to him donning the cape and cowl.
Metropolis, on the other hand, wouldn’t have been able to include Kal-El/Clark Kent until the end since presumably when the events of that show were taking place, he either would have still been living in Smallville or in isolation at the Fortress of Solitude. So in that sense, although it would have been interesting to see Lois and Luthor take center stage, I also feel like Metropolis would have faced more of an uphill battle with hooking people since Clark’s origin story wouldn’t have factored into the narrative. In addition to these creative concerns, John Stephens also shared another roadblock the spinoff ran into was how expensive it would have been. He explained:
Superman was at the very end. It was going to launch [the DC Universe streaming service], and they were going to order it direct to series. At some point they had to sit down and write a $120 million check to do 10 episodes of this show, and I think they got cold feet. It wasn’t just a pilot, and someone else was picking up the pilot. Because they weren't selling it off to Fox and having Fox pay for it. At that point they were going to be on the hook for the entire price tag. Now, obviously, they have their own platform, they're used to it. But that platform did not exist.
Although Metropolis never moved forward, a different kind of Superman prequel did have a two-season run on Syfy, as Krypton followed Kal-El’s grandfather Seg-El and included familiar DC characters like General Zod, Brainiac and Lobo. Then there’s Superman & Lois, which is about to kick off its final season and, rather than go the prequel route, follows a Clark Kent who’s married to Lois Lane and has two sons. The point being, we haven’t been lacking in live-action Superman content on TV in recent years, so I’m ok with Metropolis never being fully realized.
If you’d like to revisit Gotham or perhaps check it out for the first time, it can be streamed with a Max subscription. As always, check in with CinemaBlend for the biggest news items on upcoming DC movies and upcoming DC TV shows.
