WATCH: Three minute first look featurette for Fox’s Gotham

FOX has released a new “First Look” featurette that explores the world of their upcoming Batman-inspired series, Gotham.

Before there was Batman, there was Gotham. Everyone knows the name Commissioner Gordon. He is one of the crime world’s greatest foes, a man whose reputation is synonymous with law and order. But what is known of Gordon’s story and his rise from rookie detective to Police Commissioner? What did it take to navigate the multiple layers of corruption that secretly ruled Gotham City, the spawning ground of the world’s most iconic villains? And what circumstances created them – the larger-than-life personas who would become Catwoman, The Penguin, The Riddler, Two-Face and The Joker? Gotham is an origin story of the great DC Comics Super-Villains and vigilantes, revealing an entirely new chapter that has never been told.

Gotham follows one cop’s rise through a dangerously corrupt city teetering on the edge of evil, and chronicles the birth of one of the most popular super heroes of our time. Growing up in Gotham City’s surrounding suburbs, James Gordon romanticized the city as a glamorous and exciting metropolis where his late father once served as a successful district attorney. Now, two weeks into his new job as a Gotham City detective and engaged to his beloved fiancée, Barbara Kean, Gordon is living his dream – even as he hopes to restore the city back to the pure version he remembers it was as a kid. Brave, honest and ready to prove himself, the newly-minted detective is partnered with the brash, but shrewd police legend Harvey Bullock, as the two stumble upon the city’s highest-profile case ever: the murder of local billionaires Thomas and Martha Wayne. At the scene of the crime, Gordon meets the sole survivor: the Waynes’ hauntingly intense 12-year-old son, Bruce, toward whom the young detective feels an inexplicable kinship.

Moved by the boy’s profound loss, Gordon vows to catch the killer. As he navigates the often-underhanded politics of Gotham’s criminal justice system, Gordon will confront imposing gang boss Fish Mooney, and many of the characters who will become some of fiction’s most renowned, enduring villains, including a teenaged Selina Kyle the future Catwoman and Osawald Cobblepot/The Penguin. While the crime drama will follow Gordon’s turbulent and singular rise through the Gotham City police department, led by Police Captain Sarah Essen, it also will focus on the unlikely friendship Gordon forms with the young heir to the Wayne fortune, who is being raised by his unflappable butler, Alfred. It is a friendship that will last them all of their lives, playing a crucial role in helping the young boy eventually become the crusader he’s destined to be.

The cast includes Ben McKenzie as James Gordon, Donal Logue as Harvey Bullock, David Mazouz as Bruce Wayne, Camren Bicondova as Selina Kyle,   Grayson McCouch and Brette Taylor as Thomas and Martha Wayne, Robin Lord Taylor as Oswald Cobblepot, Sean Pertwee as Alfred Pennyworth,  Erin Richards as Gordon’s fiancee, Barbara Kean, Zabryna Guevara as Gordon’s boss at the GCPD, Captain Essen, Victoria Cartagena will play detective Renee Montoya, Andrew Stewart Jones will play detective Crispus Allen, Jada Pinkett Smith as Fish Mooney, and Drew Powell as Butch Gilzean.

Gotham is based upon characters published by DC Entertainment and is produced by Warner Bros. Television. Executive producer Bruno Heller (The Mentalist) wrote the pilot, which was directed and executive-produced by Emmy Award nominee Danny Cannon (the CSI franchise, Nikita). John Stephens will serve as an executive producer on the series.