‘The Batman’ director says Gotham police spinoff series has evolved to focus on Arkham Asylum

Reeves teases a horror-inspired dive into the asylum

Matt Reeves has given an update about one of The Batman TV spinoffs, revealing that it’s no longer about corrupt police in Gotham City but will instead detail “the world of Arkham”.

The director, who helmed the freshly released The Batman, said in a new interview that the series has developed into something different: a horror-inspired TV show that will explore the origins of The Batman‘s villainous characters.

“The GCPD [Gotham City Police Department] thing, that story has kinda evolved,” Reeves told The Cyber Nerds in a video published on Sunday (March 6).

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“We’ve actually now [moved] more into the realm of exactly what would happen in the world of Arkham [Asylum] as it relates coming off of our movie and some of the characters and their origins…almost leaning into the idea of…it’s like a horror movie or a haunted house that is Arkham,” Reeves said.

He continued: “The idea, again the way that Gotham is a character in the movie, I really want Arkham to exist as a character. You go into this environment and encounter these characters in a way that feels really fresh. And so in our work on Gotham, that story started to evolve, and it started feeling [like], ‘Wait, we should really lean into this.’ And then that’s kinda where that’s gone.”

Plot details for the original series, called Gotham P.D., were initially shared in August 2020.

“For me, the idea of this story was a story in which Gotham, which has this depth of corruption, and then the idea that we could actually do a series that is going deeper into an aspect of it, which in this case is the corrupt police department and the corrupt inner workings of the city,” Reeves told Collider at the time.

Gotham P.D., meanwhile, isn’t totally dead in the water, Reeves confirmed elsewhere.

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The filmmaker told the Happy Sad Confused podcast recently: “One thing that we’re not doing that I was gonna do….so there’s the Gotham police show, which, that one actually is put on hold. We’re not really doing that.”

He added that he hopes to “maybe someday” revisit the Gotham City Police Department.

Matt Reeves, The Batman
‘The Batman’ director Matt Reeves CREDIT: Ray Tamarra/GC Images

Gotham P.D. was originally green-lit by HBO Max. It’s not clear whether the new Arkham-focused series will also be backed by HBO.

Arkham has been heavily referenced in DC comics over the years, most notably in a 1989 comic from writer Grant Morrison titled Arkham Asylum. That story, which takes its cues from the horror genre, features Batman visiting Arkham and confronting many of the villains that he has helped lock up.

Although plot details about Reeves’ TV spinoff remain unknown, the series could draw from previous comics and mentions elsewhere of the asylum’s history and its inhabitants.

In other news, Zoë Kravitz has revealed that she was rejected from auditioning for a role in The Dark Knight Rises for being too “urban”.

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