Writer's Guide
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NINE LIVES Writer’s Guide by Lee A. Chrimes Version 1.1 – 10/6/2011 SERIES CONCEPT ............................................................................. 3 Mission Statement ......................................................................... 3 Background .................................................................................. 4 Themes........................................................................................ 5 CHARACTER BIOS............................................................................. 6 Selina Kyle ................................................................................... 6 Backstory .................................................................................. 6 Overview................................................................................... 6 Dialogue.................................................................................... 7 Appearance ............................................................................... 8 Arcs.......................................................................................... 9 Holly Robinson ............................................................................ 11 Backstory ................................................................................ 11 Overview................................................................................. 11 Dialogue.................................................................................. 12 Appearance ............................................................................. 13 Arcs........................................................................................ 13 Renee Montoya ........................................................................... 15 Backstory ................................................................................ 15 Overview................................................................................. 15 Dialogue.................................................................................. 17 Appearance ............................................................................. 17 Arcs........................................................................................ 17 Other Characters......................................................................... 19 GCPD ............................................................................................ 21 Gotham Central........................................................................... 21 Overview................................................................................. 21 Structure................................................................................. 22 Cop Stories.............................................................................. 22 BACKSTORY AND MYTHOLOGY ......................................................... 24 Overview.................................................................................... 24 Bat-Years ................................................................................... 26 STORYLINES .................................................................................. 28 Arc ............................................................................................ 28 Episodes..................................................................................... 29 Story Ideas................................................................................. 31 Season Summary ........................................................................ 32 Future Seasons ........................................................................... 34 Spin-offs .................................................................................... 35 ACTION......................................................................................... 37 SUMMARY...................................................................................... 38 2 SERIES CONCEPT Mission SStatementtatement Nine Lives is a superhero show without any obvious superheroes. It takes elements of spy-fi action ( Nikita , Alias ), urban drama ( Dark Angel ), cons and thievery ( Leverage ) and bundles it all up under the Batman world as reimagined by Christopher Nolan ( Batman Begins, The Dark Knight ). NL will be a show about finding your place in the world, about starting off at rock bottom, a stranger in a strange land, and learning to trust those worth trusting, slowly pushing yourself to newer and greater things and leaving the tragedies of your recent and distant history behind. There’ll always be new challenges, obstacles and tragedies to encounter, battle and overcome, but ultimately it’ll be a show about finding ways past whatever roadblocks get thrown in your path. We’re going to be taking Selina Kyle on a journey from down-and-out, disgraced former thief for hire, full of youthful arrogance and disdain, into her own kind of hero, one who plays to her own rulebook but can stand side by side with Batman and mean it. Holly is going to go from former junkie and hooker to bona fide ally of justice, albeit again by way of Selina’s own particular moral code. Montoya will start as a fresh-faced recruit and probably take the hardest journey of all, fighting a corrupt system she may never truly conquer, but she’s got just as much guts as Selina to face down her opponents and never blink. Our three lead girls will always be the focus of our stories – this is their show. Too many shows are content to leave their leads largely unaffected by years of progress – not us! The unique opportunity NL offers is that nobody’s ever traced the early days of Selina Kyle in any detail. Flashbacks and origin stories only give us part of the puzzle – post 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths , which along with Batman Year One is the rough starting point for our chronology, all we know about Selina is she’s an orphaned runaway who learnt thievery while living rough, and turned it into a career. Nine Lives will show us how that happened. We’re going to do this without any of the flashy cape-and-tights theatrics of Smallville – this is the grittier, more realistic take on superheroics that the Nolan movies captured so well. The world of Batman’s Gotham is a colourful, violent place full of crazy characters, but they will always feel real . I don’t want any of that cosmic Gods, aliens and magic bollocks here wherever possible – we’re not going near things like Darkseid, Justice League, or any of the Crisis events, because those aren’t the stories I want to tell. Nine Lives will be street-level action – DC prides itself on having one foot in reality and this show will toe that line. It’ll help us stand out, for one thing. We will, however, be using the DCU concept of ‘metahumans’, people with extraordinary talents, gifts and abilities, whether inherited through accident, genetics or any other means. Possibly not to the full extent of characters like Cheetah, but in order for characters like Poison Ivy or Clayface to work we’ll need to be flexible with this. We’re also going to be fun . I’m not aiming for the kind of dark, gritty storytelling you’d find on The Wire , nor the teen-friendly camp of Smallville . Somewhere between the two. Moments of tragedy, sadness, pain and loss, and moments of joy, exhilaration, fist-pumping ass-kickery and dry wisecracks. I’ve been known for action-heavy shows with strong characterisation and a line in witty humour, 3 and while Nine Lives won’t be as quiplash-y as my other shows, we’ll still known when to crack a joke, and when to shut up and kick some ass. And most importantly, we’re not slave-tied to the canon of the comics. Anyone who reads comic books will tell you that their own chronology and continuity are hopelessly muddled, contradictory affairs, with reboots and retcons aplenty (and, in fact, one about to happen across the DCU later this year which will, if I’m honest, fuck a load of things up). When I originally started trying to map out Nine Lives , I quickly found that trying to find a consistent throughline of stories was nearly impossible, and when I realised that some big Bat-events that I wanted to play off wouldn’t be available canonically for six or seven years, I decided we need to strike off our own way with everything. Be respectful to the comic history and try not to deviate too massively unless necessary, but by and large do our own thing. For example, while our setup here is very much based around late 80s/early 90s Batman, the first volume of Catwoman ran from ’93 to ’01, putting it out of sync with where Season One begins, and Volume II from 2002 is where my head is with Nine Lives in terms of setting, scale and style. Renee Montoya originally didn’t debut until 1992, so she’s been brought back to fit into earlier continuity (and the GCPD stuff in general takes a cue from the excellent Gotham Central series, ’03-‘06). There was also the issue of how much Batman to use here. Nine Lives will hit the major Bat-arcs ( Knightfall, A Death In The Family, No Man’s Land etc.) but as strictly background only. Batman will feature only occasionally (at least in the first few seasons), with reference to events and storylines off-camera when appropriate. Batman as a character could easily dwarf Selina early on, so to avoid that we keep him in the shadows until our Selina is more established. Same goes for the more major league Rogues Gallery like Joker and Two-Face. We’ll be doing tightly-packed, 13-episode seasons. No filler. I don’t mind a more serialised style, especially in later