Meet the man destined to be a butler as PENNYWORTH finds its star

Gotham is a big hit, as most Batman related things are, and has been for a number of years now. As such, it was only a matter of time before it got its first spin-off curated by creator Bruno Heller.

Honestly, I had forgotten that they even announced the “tales of young Alfred” series Pennyworth for EPIX (a channel I don’t think I’ve ever actually switched over to), I’m not even sure if I have it. Anyway, they’ve cast a young Alfred in Jack Bannon (Ripper Street, The Imitation Game) for a series that’s summed up as:

It follows Bruce Wayne’s legendary butler, Alfred Pennyworth, a former British SAS soldier in his 20s, who forms a security company and goes to work with a young billionaire Thomas Wayne, who’s not yet Bruce’s father, in 1960s London. Alfred Pennyworth is a boyishly handsome, cheerful, charming, clever young man from London. Honest, open-faced and witty; you’d never take him for an SAS killer. Alfred doesn’t know how to reconcile the kind-hearted boy he used to be with the cold, calculated killer he was forced to become. He’s a man on the make, who doesn’t know what to make of himself yet.

The untold story of how a man becomes a butler. Maybe he’ll end up squaring off with Oswald Cobblepot’s grandfather or something on the way there.

The most recent comic to delve into Alfred’s militaristic past was Scott Snyder and Rafael Albuquerque’s All-Star Batman arc entitled “The First Ally”, though its intermittently been the subject of a few different Batman comics here and there. This will be the first full-fledged delving into it that I can recall, or care to Google,

Production begins next week, so this is very much a next Fall premiere kind of thing provided all goes well. If you wanted more Gotham, gang, here it comes.