The Batman's Gotham City Police Department show is apparently still in development as Warner Bros. Discovery has reportedly split it and an Arkham Asylum show into two separate productions.
As reported by Variety, a source familiar with the matter said the original idea for a Jim Gordon-focused GCPD prequel series - which later became became a 'haunted house' story about Arkham Asylum - has now been salvaged.
The shows were previously thought to be the same project, as The Batman director Matt Reeves said himself that the original GCPD idea had become something else, rather than saying that a new show had begun development alongside it.
"The GCDP thing, that story has story has kind of evolved," he said in March. "We’ve actually now [moved] more into the realm of exactly what would happen in the world of Arkham."
Joe Barton, who became the GCPD series' showrunner in January last year but has since also left, also told Variety that his idea had been scrapped. "I think it would have been really great and that’s kind of why I feel gutted about it, just because I know we would have made a great show," he said. Whether the in-development new version of the show will retain any of those original ideas is unknown.
Warner Bros. Discovery is yet to announce anything official, but adding a third The Batman spin-off show to go alongside the Arkham Asylum series and another about Colin Farrell's The Penguin would come at a time of severe cuts at the company where several other films and TV shows are being cancelled.
Batgirl is perhaps the headlining cancellation after it was cut by Warner Bros. Discovery back in August, but it was just the first in a long line of scrapped projects including Strange Adventures and The Wonder Twins. The move was highly controversial, with an anonymous Batgirl actor calling Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav an "imbecile".
The Batman 2 did survive the cuts, however, and the world created by Reeves is a current standout as the director is also reportedly in talks with other directors and writers to create films based on Batman villains including Scarecrow, Clayface, and Professor Pyg.
In our 10/10 review of the original, IGN said: "Matt Reeves’ violent, thrilling, darkly beautiful take on The Batman more than justifies its place in the franchise’s canon."
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelancer. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/the-batmans-gcpd-series-spinoff-apparently-isnt-dead