The Batman director Matt Reeves has opened up about the planned Gotham PD spinoff series for HBO Max, and how it evolved into a show about the notorious Arkham Asylum.

All the way back in July 2020, HBO Max announced that it had ordered a spinoff series based on Reeves' then-upcoming film The Batman, which would focus on the Gotham City Police Department. Many speculated that the show would be based upon the popular DC comic book series Gotham Central -- which was created by Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker and Michael Lark -- though this was later confirmed to not be the case. The Gotham PD series was expected to be one of two HBO Max originals spinning out of The Batman, with the other focusing on Colin Farrell's Penguin.

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However, during a recent interview with the Toronto Sun, Reeves dished on The Batman's spinoffs, saying, "We're doing [The Penguin series] and we're doing another series that connects to Arkham [Asylum]." While it was unclear at the time if the Arkham series would be separate from the planned GCPD show, it now seems as though the two are, in fact, one and the same.

"The GCDP thing, that story has story has kinda evolved. 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," Reeves said on The Cyber Nerds podcast.

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"The idea, again the way that Gotham is a character in the movie, I really want Arkham to exist as a character," the director continued. "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." Interestingly enough, back in August 2021, The Illuminerdi reported that the Gotham PD series was being developed under the working title "Arkham."

As for the Penguin spinoff, Reeves recently revealed that the Colin Farrell-led HBO Max series actually began life as an offhanded pitch for a potential sequel to The Batman. Apparently, Reeves told Warner Bros. executives that a second film could be a good place to chronicle Oswald Cobblepot's rise to power in Gotham's criminal underworld. "And they were like, 'Oh, we want to do that as a show,'" the director told Variety.

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The Batman is in theaters now.

Source: YouTube, via The Direct