The Batman director Matt Reeves has shed a little more light on the in-development Arkham Asylum spinoff series and what we can expect from it.
A number of shows set in the world of The Batman were in development for the HBO Max streaming service at one point or another. The first spinoff to be announced back in 2020 was set to focus on Jeffrey Wright's Jim Gordon and the corruption within the Gotham City Police Department. However, it sounds as if this show has evolved into the Arkham series.
Speaking to YouTube channel The Cyber Nerds, Reeves confirmed that the GCPD show has grown into a new kind of spinoff that explores the infamous Arkham Asylum and its troubled history.
"The GCDP thing, that story has story has kind of 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, again in their origins," the director said. "It’s like a horror movie or a haunted house that is Arkham.
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"Again, the way that Gotham is a character in the movie, I really want Arkham to exist as a character, so that 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 that’s kind of where that’s gone.”
The Arkham Asylum series isn't the only spinoff coming to HBO Max. Penguin, a crime drama detailing Oswald Cobblepot's (Collin Farrell) rise through the Gotham underworld is going well, according to Reeves.
"We're doing this Penguin series and one of the great things about that is Colin Farrell - he's like you've never seen him. He's so incredible and he's a scene-stealer. Along the way, we thought maybe we could do [Penguin] as a series," Reeves told The Toronto Sun.
"So I talked to HBO Max and showed them Colin in the movie and spoke to them about what this could be and they said, 'Let's do it.'"
Topics: Batman, DC, Warner Bros