Jimmy Tatro reportedly thinking about big psychic gorilla, as one does

That’s right: Deadline reports that Tatro is “circling” the part of Gorilla Grodd, the classic DC Comics villain who usually doesn’t get as much press as other classic DC Comics villains, on account of being a psychic gorilla. Specifically, Tatro is reportedly being considered for the part for DC Crime, a still un-greenlit TV show centered on Skyler Gisondo’s Superman character Jimmy Olsen.

The fact that Grodd’s even being talked about for this show is a pretty clear indicator that DC Crime is really going to steer into the Silver Age Jimmy Olsen of it all, harkening back to an era when the photographer/apparent sex object got into constant shenanigans where he’d wind up turning into a superhero, or a werewolf, or, on a few notable occasions, a giant turtle-themed kaiju called Giant Turtle Man. That dovetails pretty nicely, tone-wise, with Grodd, who is treated as a pretty major threat in the comics but whose only major live-action appearances to date have been in The Flash TV show and its connected Legends Of Tomorrow, where the inherent goofiness of “evil gorilla wants to control your mind” was able to fly.

DC Crime is reportedly part of James Gunn and company’s continued experiments to play with tone and genre in the current DCU: The series will reportedly present itself as a “true-crime docuseries” starring Olsen, whose investigative focus apparently falls on a psychic gorilla who controls people’s brains, which we’d argue is pretty newsworthy. Unlike, say, Lanterns—set to debut next month—the series hasn’t been officially set for production just yet, but it’s clear Gunn and his team are interested in continuing to import the more fantastical and goofy elements of DC Comics into their shared reality, one telepathic ape at a time.