The Batman spinoff about the Gotham PD is now about Arkham Asylum

The Batman is freshly arrived in theaters and it’s already tearing up the box office. It’s the biggest hit of the past couple of years, second only to Spider-Man: No Way Home.

With that in mind, Warner Bros.’ strategy to preemptively develop several The Batman spinoff shows for HBO Max is sounding pretty smart. We know of two: one will revolve around Colin Farrell’s Penguin; it will be a prequel showing how he rose to power in Gotham’s criminal underworld. The other is set at the Gotham City Police Department.

Or at least, it was. According to director Matt Reeves, things have changed. “The GCDP thing, that story has story has kinda evolved,” he told The Cyber Nerds. “We’ve actually now [moved] more into the realm of exactly what would happen in the world of Arkham as it relates coming off of our movie, and some of the characters… almost leaning into the idea of… it’s like a horror movie or a haunted house that is Arkham.”

"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."

So this spinoff show will now be set in Arkham Asylum, which sounds like a solid idea. Arkham is one of the most iconic locations in comics yet has gotten surprisingly little live-action representation over the years.

And of course, this will allow them to highlight some of the villains from the movie, including Paul Dano’s Riddler and…other characters who may or may not be in the film.

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