'The Batman' Director Matt Reeves Is Working On An 'Arkham Asylum' Horror Show Spinoff
*No spoilers for 'The Batman' in that video or this blog, go see it this weekend!*
For the past few months, 'The Batman' director/co-writer Matt Reeves has been working on a couple spinoffs of his take on Gotham City for HBO Max - one being Colin Farrell's 'The Penguin' miniseries, which was officially ordered this week....
....and the other being a 'Gotham P.D.' show, centered around the corrupt police force in the city during Batman's first year; meaning it would serve as a prequel to 'The Batman', which takes place in Batman's second year.
Recently, though, Reeves revealed that the 'Gotham P.D.' show has been scrapped/put on hold for now because the team is much more fascinated with the idea of doing an 'Arkham Asylum' show in the horror genre....
“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 and their origins…almost leaning into the idea of, it’s like a horror movie or a haunted house that is Arkham. 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.”
If you've seen 'The Batman', you definitely know what Reeves is talking about when he says Gotham is sort've a "character" in the movie, and for him to recognize that Arkham should/could be used in the same way - but with a horror twist - just makes me giddy as hell! This guy gets it!
Grant Morrison's trippy ass 'Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth' was probably the first graphic novel that ever legitimately scared me when I read it….
….and obviously, the Rocksteady video game/series just made this hospital/prison for the criminally insane even more iconic in recent years than I'm sure anyone imagined….
'The Batman' does features a glimpse of Arkham in the movie, and knowing Matt Reeves is a big 'Mindhunter' fan, I wonder if the show will take inspiration from that almost procedural-style format.
Could we see Jeffrey Wright's Jim Gordon and maybe his partner on the GCPD interviewing different characters/villains from Batman's rogues gallery every week in search of a better understanding of Gotham's criminals? There's certainly enough wicked minds in that city for a couple seasons worth of television! Maybe they could even work the 'Gotham P.D.' stuff in as a sub-plot to the Arkham show.
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Oh, and one of the best parts of 'Batman: The Animated Series' - arguably the greatest rendition of the character ever - was putting an episode on and having no idea who the villain would be until you saw their stylized title card….
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Imagine getting something similar to that with this show as a little nod? That would be awesome! Though the 'Animated Series' team is now working on a new Batman animated show for HBO Max, and may include those themselves….but I digress.
I'm extremely confident in Matt Reeves as a storyteller/director/producer in this world after seeing what he did with 'The Batman' - which I'm going to see for the second time this weekend (in IMAX!) - and I'll be counting the days til these spinoffs arrive.
Siri, play 'Something in the Way' by Nirvana….