DC CRIME Series Hosted by Jimmy Olsen in Development at HBO Max

 
Jimmy Olsen is getting his own true crime series. Well...DC crime at least.

Variety is reporting that a fictional "true crime" docuseries is being developed by DC Studios for HBO Max. Titled DC Crime, the series will be hosted by DC Comics character Jimmy Olsen, with actor Skyler Gisondo reprising his role from Superman (2025).

According to the article, the first season will focus on DC supervillain Gorilla Grodd, a longtime nemesis of The Flash.

Tony Yacenda and Dan Perrault will serve as writers, executive producers, and showrunners on the series. James Gunn and Peter Safran of DC Studios will also serve as executive producers, with DC Studios’ Galen Vaisman overseeing the production from Warner Bros. Television. Yacenda and Perrault created the critically-acclaimed Netflix show American Vandal, which parodied the true crime genre. The show aired for two seasons and won Peabody Award for best writing for a comedy series. The duo went on to create the Paramount+ mockumentary series Players, which was set in the world of eSports.

Created in 1938 by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Jimmy Olsen first appeared in Action Comics (vol.1) #6 as an unnamed "office boy" with a bow tie until he was formally introduced as Jimmy Olsen on the Superman radio show The Adventures of Superman in 1940.  Jimmy first appeared as a named character in Superman (vol.1) #13 in 1941, where he became a cub reporter and photographer for the Daily Planet newspaper as a co-worker with Clark Kent, Lois Lane and Perry White.

Recently, Olsen's antics, glamorous lifestyle as Superman's pal, and strange transformations were depicted as a source of streaming-media ad revenue that was keeping the Daily Planet afloat. In Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen (vol.2), the 12-issue series explored Jimmy's siblings Janie and Julian, his family's historic relations with Lex Luthor's family, a plot involving the attempted murder and faked death of Olsen, and a marriage in Gorilla City that Jimmy subsequently forgot to annul. The series poked fun at DC Comics' own history, including a sequence in which Jimmy angered Batman by suggesting a phone-in campaign to decide whether Robin lived or died. By the end of the series, Jimmy received a new Signal Watch and became the publisher of the Daily Planet.

Created in 1959 by John Broome and Carmine Infantino, Gorilla Grodd first appeared in The Flash (vol.1) #106 as a hyper-intelligent telepathic gorilla able to control the minds of others. He and other gorillas gained sapience and psychic powers after an alien spaceship crashed in their area. The gorillas lived in peace until their home was discovered by explorers. Grodd forced one of the explorers to kill the alien and took over Gorilla City, planning to conquer the world. Solovar, King of Gorilla City, telepathically contacted Barry Allen to warn of the evil gorilla's plans, and Grodd was defeated. The villain managed to return again and again to plague the Flash and the hero's allies.

Most recently, in the "We Are Yesterday" storyline, Grodd appeared as a leading member of the Legion of Doom. He manipulated Air Wave into spying on the Justice League on his behalf, claiming that Air Wave was dying from "tachyon poisoning". Grodd later absorbed Omega energy from the rift created following Darkseid's death and dubbed himself "Gorilla God". However, Air Wave betrayed Grodd and defeated him with help from a group of heroes summoned from the past. Following his defeat, Grodd allied himself with Time Trapper and the World Forger, forming the Quantum Quorum to deal with Darkseid's return and the damage caused to the timestream.