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Dark Knight Rising



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Gender: Male
Points: 14
Reviews: 19
Sat Jan 07, 2017 4:45 am
CarryOnMrCaulfield says...



I am no stranger to writing scripts. At the moment I am producing a Star Wars themed one, and I have recently decided to write one based on the DC Universe, particularly Batman. However, my proposed project does not take place in the established DC canon, as this is my own interpretation of the Dark Knight. Instead of what we know from the comics, this world is grounded in reality, similar to how the Dark Knight Trilogy was. In spite of that, however, much inspiration in regards to certain story arcs have been loosely drawn from Nolan's trilogy, Burton's films, and several of the comics, particularly the Killing Joke, Year One, Under the Red Hood, and Destroyer. I am generally not into fanfiction, however I have made exceptions for audio dramas.

Season one follows a young Bruce Wayne as he returns to Gotham City. He develops a vigilante persona and begins putting a stop to petty crime in Gotham's East End. At the same time, organized crime is on the rise, particularly the syndicates of Carmine Falcone, Salvatore Maroni, Carl Grissom, and the newcomer Ozzie Cobblepot, who also happens to be a successful investor and shareholder of Wayne Enterprises. Bruce tries to find bold new ways to combat organized crime, coming close to crippling Grissom's operations on the waterfront. He allies himself with a passionate, but mentally unstable, anarchist who calls himself "John Doe", but disgusted by the enigmatic terrorist's unpredictable and violent methods, Bruce develops a code of his own, using technologies developed for him by Lucius Fox of Wayne Technologies to help advance his goal. He takes on the persona of "the Bat" and manages to take down the Falcone Family. Many of Falcone's operations are taken over by Cobblepot, who tries to legitimize many of the mob boss' former operations, but continuing to involve himself in crime all the while maintaining the public image of a wealthy shareholder of Wayne Enterprises. As Batman assists in cleaning up the streets of his city and avoiding the police at the same time, the mob becomes the least of his worries. A mysterious bomber has begun targeting some of Gotham's newest skyscrapers, blasting them into oblivion and revealing Gotham's older, art deco structures. As it turns out, the League of Shadows, led by Bruce Wayne's old mentor Ra's Al Ghul, has launched a crusade to take over Gotham in order to restore order via their own perverted sense of justice. Now it is up to a young Batman, as well as the enigmatic and sociopathic anarchist John Doe, to put a stop to the League of Shadows.

Here are the planned episodes so far.

Dark Knight Rising

• Chapter I – The Dark Before the Dawn
o Twenty-three year old billionaire and Princeton graduate Bruce Wayne is shot and left for dead after he tries to stop a mugging. Disgruntled and in a state of severe depression, Bruce abandons his home in Gotham City and travels to India. Wandering the streets, Bruce, who studied medicine and psychology while at Princeton, gets a job at a local clinic, but when he sees how the corrupt local government mistreats and abuses the local population, Bruce takes it upon himself to protect them. After brutally murdering local enforcers, Bruce is imprisoned and is sentenced to death, but he is freed by a mysterious group of Tibetan assassins led by the enigmatic Ra’s Al Ghul. Seeing the burning passion for justice that young Wayne has within him, Ra’s trains Bruce into a deadly assassin, eventually dispatching him to kill a local warlord. When the League of Shadows hatches a plan to stage a coup within the Pakistani government, which would entail murdering key political and military officials, Bruce refuses, vowing that murder is not justice. Ra’s affably but reluctantly allows Bruce to depart the League of Shadows on the condition that he never interfere with their plans ever again.


• Chapter II – Genesis
o Two years after leaving Gotham, Bruce returns to his home city only to find it in a state even worse than when he left it, overrun with crime and controlled by crime lords and corrupt politicians. Reuniting with his butler Alfred and old friends from his past, Rachael Dawes and Harvey Dent, Bruce struggles with dealing with both the media and his inner demons. After a mob war breaks out between Carmine Falcone and Salvatore Maroni, Bruce vows that he needs to do something in order to put a stop to organized crime. Bruce goes into the depths of the city in disguise to analyze the situation, but he is assaulted by a mob while in Gotham’s East End. After fighting off the mob and a band of corrupt cops led by Lieutenant Arnold Flass, Bruce is left wounded, but manages to escape. Disgusted by what he witnessed, Bruce vows to put a stop to petty crime where he can. Over the next few weeks, Bruce, in a mask and dressed all in black, puts a stop to muggers and petty criminals throughout the crime infested districts of Gotham. Eventually he attracts the attention of Captain James Gordon of the GCPD, the very same officer who was responsible for investigating the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne thirteen years earlier. After busting a drug deal linked to Carmine Falcone’s syndicate, the mob boss puts a price on the head of the new vigilante. While going for a walk on the grounds of Wayne Manor, Bruce falls into a large hole – the same one that he once fell into as a child. He explores the cave and figures that he could use it as a base of operations.


• Chapter III – Gotham Knight
o Bruce Wayne settles in as a board member of Wayne Enterprises, but eager to continue his vigilantism, he figures that it is necessary to utilize advanced technologies that his company has produced in order to take his crusade to the next level. Applying as a full time employee of Wayne Technologies, headed by Dr. Lucius Fox, Bruce informs him of his intentions, and Fox agrees to help assist Bruce in his endeavors. Testing out a prototype light armor and rubber cowl, Bruce investigates a lead relating to a child prostitution ring in the East End of Gotham. Traveling to a warehouse in the Gotham Narrows, he discovers a hub for human trafficking. He manages to incapacitate those responsible and then calls the cops. When the police arrive led by Lieutenant Harvey Bullock, they try to arrest Bruce as well, but he flees, forcing the police to chase him. After he incapacitates three of them, they open fire, chasing and cornering him in a building scheduled to be demolished. Bruce greatly wounds two cops who enter the building, and Bullock orders a swat team armed with grenades to reinforce them. Although he manages to escape the cops, Bruce is wounded, having been shot in the right shoulder. Having passed out, Bruce is woken up by a rather pale looking man in his late twenties or early thirties. The man introduces himself as “John Doe”, but when Bruce says he has not come up with a name for his vigilante persona yet, John says that he knows he is Bruce Wayne and that he greatly empathizes with his desire to put a stop to crime, particularly the crime syndicates of Carmine Falcone and Carl Grissom. A self-described anarchist, John Doe is a passionate, but very unstable man, but Bruce agrees to ally himself with him. Over the next few weeks, John and Bruce cripple Grissom’s syndicate, and John reveals that he has a score to settle with him, as they used to be associated somehow. They end up attacking a warehouse owned by Grissom and John insists that they kill everyone, much to Bruce’s chagrin. Tired of John’s violent nature, Bruce decides that he wants out of the alliance after the former reveals his plan to blow up one of Grissom’s legitimate businesses. John curses out Bruce, who returns home to Wayne Manor. That night, he watches the news on television, reporting that a popular nightclub owned by Grissom has been destroyed in a massive explosion, resulting in the deaths of nearly 400 innocent people. Turning off the TV, Bruce sits there in the dark, but is interrupted as a large bat breaks in through the window, looking directly at him.


• Chapter IV – The Batman
o Several of Gotham City’s allied crime bosses assemble to discuss the recent turn of events. Falcone is worried that he is losing more of his turf to Maroni following his devastating defeat at the hands of the masked vigilante several weeks earlier. Grissom’s syndicate has recently suffered a major blow, which would be difficult to recover from, so he pledges allegiance to Falcone. In the meantime, Harvey Dent has been appointed assistant District Attorney, and his vigilant efforts to put a stop to crime has led to a further decrease in the power of organized crime in the city. Bruce Wayne himself is approached by a wealthy Wall Street investor named Ozzie Cobblepot, a native Gothamite, who has recently become a major shareholder in Wayne Enterprises. A former and affable acquaintance of Bruce’s, Ozzie’s business ventures seem to be rather suspicious to Bruce, leading to him and Alfred doing some digging through the use of technologies provided to them by Lucius Fox. Although nothing of interest comes up, evidence comes up implicating Cobblepot with the remnants of the old Moony Syndicate, which was once a subsidiary of the Falcone Family. As the turf war between Falcone and Maroni intensifies, Carl Grissom is caught in the middle and he begins to lose more and more power as his allies begin to abandon him. Falcone himself, believing Grissom to be a liability, disavows the crime lord, leaving him to fend for himself. Bruce goes to Lucius Fox, who has recently developed technology to help him create a prototype suit, and Bruce explains that he wants to make a costume that resembles a bat. He returns to the Cave and begins working on assembling his new costume. Ozzie pays Sal Maroni a visit, offering to make a deal with him, specifically referring to an alliance in order to take out the Falcone Family, and Maroni offers to protect Ozzie’s small syndicate in exchange for a cut of the money that he makes as a shareholder of Wayne Enterprises. In the meantime, James Gordon busts a drug shipping ring operated by Grissom, one of his last remaining operations. After hearing this, Grissom hatches a plan to invest what money he has left in the stock market and establish a series of legitimate businesses in order to regain some of his wealth and power. He makes a deal with business mogul Maximillian Shreck, an old colleague of his, and invests in his department store franchise. Finally having completed the batsuit, Bruce Wayne goes downtown, near Monarch Plaza, in order to chase down petty criminals as practice. He stops the mugging of a family in an ally not far from the one where his parents were murdered, killing one of the muggers and tying up another before calling the police and escaping. Several evenings later, Bruce hosts a charity event at Wayne Manor, where he meets photojournalist Vicki Vale, to whom he is smitten with. Also at the event are Carmine Falcone and Max Shreck, with whom Thomas Wayne once did business with. Bruce meets privately with Falcone, who tries to threaten Bruce into submission. Also in attendance is Ozzie Cobblepot, who informs Bruce of his most recent investments in Wayne Enterprises. Once the event is over, Bruce sees on the news reports of a new nightclub being opened by Carl Grissom, who has reportedly come into newfound wealth overnight. In the meantime, Grissom is celebrating with some of his associates in a penthouse, when it is stormed by John Doe flanked by two other men. Grissom, who recognizes John as a former associate pleads for his life and asks him if they can cut a deal. John replies “The man you knew is dead, my friend. I’m changed! And as you can see, I’m a lot happier!” John, laughing maniacally, and the other two men gun down Grissom and his business associates. Batman arrives to find them all dead, and he analyzes the murder, coming to the conclusion that it was a crime of passion, but he is unable to discern who would have killed him. Grissom’s phone suddenly rings, and Batman finds it, seeing that Falcone left a voice message asking for Grissom to meet him at the docks in order to discuss a possible renewal of their alliance. Batman heads to the docks and captures Falcone, tying him to a giant spotlight. The cops find Falcone subdued, but Batman is long gone.
  





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425 Reviews



Gender: Male
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Mon Jan 09, 2017 3:59 pm
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Nate says...



This is very, very ambitious, and my biggest worry with what you described thus far is you're not going to be able to fully develop each chapter as each chapter could be one season in it's own right. But maybe that's what you're going for? With each chapter being one season?

However, whether that's what you're going for or not, I think you should start with chapter 1 and explore it more fully. Since this is an audio drama you're working on, come up with ten episodes that could make up chapter 1.

Last but not least, you might run into some intellectual property problems! Technically, pretty much any fanfiction runs afoul of copyright laws, but authors and companies generally tolerate it. But, you're not only copying characters here, you're also copying entire plots. Your defense would be that you're reinterpreting the story, but I think it's something to keep in mind. Also important to keep in mind that readers / listeners may not be interested in something that is broadly similar to Batman stories they've already heard.

If you want to, you can fix that by changing the setting (e.g., set in the future with Gotham being an entire planet-wide city), or by creating your own story with new characters and places (but still have essentially the same plot). However, that's entirely up to you and the important thing is to just start writing.
  





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Gender: Male
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Reviews: 19
Tue Jan 10, 2017 12:25 am
CarryOnMrCaulfield says...



Nate wrote:This is very, very ambitious, and my biggest worry with what you described thus far is you're not going to be able to fully develop each chapter as each chapter could be one season in it's own right. But maybe that's what you're going for? With each chapter being one season?

However, whether that's what you're going for or not, I think you should start with chapter 1 and explore it more fully. Since this is an audio drama you're working on, come up with ten episodes that could make up chapter 1.

Last but not least, you might run into some intellectual property problems! Technically, pretty much any fanfiction runs afoul of copyright laws, but authors and companies generally tolerate it. But, you're not only copying characters here, you're also copying entire plots. Your defense would be that you're reinterpreting the story, but I think it's something to keep in mind. Also important to keep in mind that readers / listeners may not be interested in something that is broadly similar to Batman stories they've already heard.

If you want to, you can fix that by changing the setting (e.g., set in the future with Gotham being an entire planet-wide city), or by creating your own story with new characters and places (but still have essentially the same plot). However, that's entirely up to you and the important thing is to just start writing.


Under most circumstances, I would agree in terms of it being licenced. However, this being an audiodrama and the fact that it is not for profit, I think it will be fine. This is not something I would begin until I am finished with the Star Wars one, of which I am currently writing the fourth episode, and I have already recruited voice actors.

And thanks for the input! It was very helpful. I enjoy hearing the opinions and thoughts of others.
  





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425 Reviews



Gender: Male
Points: 11417
Reviews: 425
Tue Jan 10, 2017 1:03 am
Nate says...



Sounds good. But just keep in mind that neither the medium nor whether you make money on it matters at all. You will probably be fine, but the reason is that most companies don't go after fanfiction due to the bad publicity it creates.
  








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