Former ‘Fantastic Four’ Actor Joins the DC Universe on FOX’s Gotham!
While the first season of FOX’s Batman prequel series Gotham, the story of Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) as well as the origin stories of Gotham City’s most famous villains, had its ups and downs, the upcoming second season has already started to show off some great potential. Yesterday, TVLine’s Michael Ausiello broke the news that actor Michael Chiklis has joined the show in a major role that is going to be at the level of series regular.
Chiklis will be playing GCPD Captain Nathaniel Barnes, a brand new character created specifically for the show. The Gotham producers describes Barnes as following: “[Barnes] lands on the GCPD like a tornado, ripping out the dead wood of Gotham’s police force. He is a law and order zealot; unafraid of making enemies – on either side of the law. For Gordon, Barnes is a hero and a mentor, someone with whom he can share the burden of heroism. Captain Barnes proves himself to be a strong ally to Gordon… but one day he will make an equally powerful enemy.”
Many will recognize Chiklis from work such as The Shield as well as his work on Ryan Murphy’s American Horror Story: Freak Show. However, this won’t be Chiklis’ first time stepping into the world that is comic book television/movies. First up, a couple of years ago, in the early comic book movie age, Chiklis starred in as Ben Grimm a.k.a. The Thing in the first two Fantastic Four movies, which is about to return to the big screen with Josh Trank’s The Fantastic Four, a reboot that will feature Jaime Bell as The Thing.
On the small screen, Chiklis played Jim Powell on Greg Berlanti’s (super producer of CW’s Arrow, The Flash, DC’s Legends of Tomorrow and CBS’ Supergirl) superhero drama on ABC: No Ordinary Family where Jim and his whole family one day gains super-powers and becomes a super-family. The show sadly only lasted for one season, but it’s great to see such a terrific actor now back in the comic book genre.
Several previous casting announcements has been coming in for the past few weeks as well as some cast member upgrades. First of all, we know that Morena Baccarin (Dr. Leslie Thompkins), Nicholas D’Agsto (Harvey Dent) and Chris Chalk (Lucius Fox) have all been upgraded to series regular. But we will be seeing some new faces as well with James Frain (The Tudors) and Jessica Lucas (Gracepoint) have joined the show as as the villainous brother-sister duo Theo and Tabitha Galavan (a.k.a DC Comics’ Tigress).
We know that we will be seeing some new iconic Batman villains this year such as Mr. Freeze, Mad Hatter and more. There will also be the continuing and mysterious evolution of The Joker and more importantly: Edward Nygma’s (Cory Michael Smith) transformation into the villain that he was destined to become, The Riddler.
Gotham will begin its second season on Monday September 21, 8/7c on FOX.
