Matt Reeves Talks Failed ‘The Batman’ Spinoffs ‘Arkham Asylum,’ ‘Gotham PD’

‘The Batman’ director attributes the downfall of both series to HBO exec expectations, stating they said, ‘We like what you’re doing, and we want to lean harder into the marquee characters.'

Matt Reeves (The Batman) has opened up about the highly anticipated, but ultimately scrapped, The Batman spinoff series Arkham Asylum and Gotham PD, Variety has reported.

Gotham PD was first announced in 2020. Set one year before the events of The Batman, the series was set to explore the internal corruption within the city’s force.

“It wasn’t going to be a Batman story, it was going about this corrupt cop,” Reeves said on the Happy Sad Confused podcast in 2022. “And it was going to be about how the worst gang in Gotham were the GCPD. And [the cop] was going to come across paths, he would have touched paths with Gordon who would have been — it would have been someone to measure him against. But it would be a battle for [the cop’s] soul.”

Reeves pivoted to Arkham Asylum when the edgy take on the Gotham police failed to get off the ground. The series, written and showrun by Antonio Campos and described as “a horror movie or a haunted house that is Arkham,” was scrapped earlier this month.

Speaking to Entertainment Weekly, Reeves attributes the downfall of both series to HBO exec expectations. “They were like, ‘We like what you’re doing, and we want to lean harder into the marquee characters,'” Reeves revealed. As neither series focused on high profile, familiar characters, they were both tabled.

The inspiration for Gotham PD was not lost, however, and was integrated into the last standing spinoff, The Penguin. The series, which bridges the gap between The Batman and The Batman Part II, stars Colin Farrell (In Bruges, The Banshees of Inisherin) as Oz Cobb (aka “The Penguin”). The eight-episode DC Studios drama series continues the epic crime saga and debuts September 19 on Max.