In 2020, HBO Max announced the first of several series set in the universe of director Matt Reeves’ The Batman (above). Focused on the Gotham City police department, the unnamed series was announced with Boardwalk Empire‘s Terence Winter as writer; a press release said it would “build upon the motion picture’s examination of the anatomy of corruption in Gotham City, ultimately launching a new Batman universe across multiple platforms.”
This is not to be confused with the other spinoff focusing on Colin Farrell’s Penguin, or, as it turns out, the other spinoff set in Arkham Asylum, which just brought on showrunner Antonion Campos (The Staircase). Earlier this year, an interview with Reeves suggested that the Gotham PD show had essentially shifted into the Arkham show, but a new report from Variety makes it sound as if that’s not the case.
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In announcing Campos as the writer and showrunner for the Arkham Asylum series, Variety says, “an individual with knowledge of the situation now says that the two are in fact completely separate and that the Gotham PD series remains in development.” But it’s had a turbulent time: Writer Winter is no longer part of the project, and neither is writer Joe Barton (The Lazarus Project).
But is this show actually still happening? In a new interview with Barton—promoting his upcoming Netflix series The Bastard Son and the Devil Himself—Variety refers to the GCPD series as “axed.” Burton says of his time developing it, “I do think probably the process of making it would have been challenging. If the development of it is anything to go by, the actual fucking making of it, I think would have been – yeah, fucking intense probably. So in that respect, I’m kind of glad. It was definitely stressful.”
Of course, there’s one other question looming over all of this: Do people want a series about Gotham’s corrupt cops? “It was going to be about how the worst gang in Gotham were the GCPD,” Reeves said in March—an intriguing premise, but one that does seem maybe a little hard to pull off. According to Variety:
Reeves said the idea was “super cool, [but] they didn’t not like the idea, they just wanted to center a show on a character who was more — I get it,” alluding to the studio’s desire to center the show on a less corrupted protagonist. “So I was like, ok. So maybe someday we’ll do that show.”
Maybe? It’s pretty unclear at the moment.
