The Gotham PD series is no longer moving forward as The Batman director Matt Reeves lets it be known it has evolved into an Arkham Asylum horror series for HBO Max.
While discussing The Batman with The Cyber Nerds on YouTube, Reeves talked about the change:
“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. 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.”
I think the change is a good thing as recently saw the Gotham series air on Fox, which sort of sounds similar, so instead, it sounds as if Batman’s rogue’s gallery will be explored in the Arkham Asylum series, and what is interesting about that is, I know when they first came up with the idea of doing The Batman movie all those years ago with Batman in his second year of being a hero, it was talked about that the movie would incorporate Arkham Asylum and Batman’s villains, so again, after all these years, they seem to be going back to their original plan, in part, which was to have a younger Batman in his second year of being a hero come out after Man of Steel.
Note: Spoilers follow for The Batman.
The Batman and Arkham
As we saw at the end of The Batman, the Riddler was placed inside Arkham Asylum, and he wasn’t alone.
When the Riddler was having his meltdown, a certain someone told the Riddler a riddle which saw the two become friends and that someone happened to be the Joker.
Director Matt Reeves confirmed it was the Joker played by Barry Keoghan.
“You’re right,” Reeves told Variety. “It is the Joker.”
Reeves went on to admit that he has no plans for Joker to show up in sequels, and he even told Keoghan it could be a one-and-done, but maybe Joker will be a part of the Arkham series on HBO Max?
“It’s not an Easter egg scene,” Reeves explained. “It’s not one of those end credits Marvel or DC scenes where it’s going, like, ‘Hey, here’s the next movie!’ In fact, I have no idea when or if we would return to that character in the movies.”
What’s also pretty cool is that Matt Reeves revealed he filmed an additional scene that he cut with Barry Keoghan as the Joker and that he plans on releasing it at a later time:
In an early cut of “The Batman,” Keoghan actually showed up much earlier, in a scene following the revelation that the Riddler has killed the Gotham City police commissioner (before Jeffrey Wright’s Jim Gordon gets the job) and left behind yet another note addressed to the Batman. Between the Riddler’s notes casting an uncomfortable spotlight on Batman and the discovery that the Riddler is killing city leaders neck-deep in corruption, Batman finds himself unnerved over what to make of what the Riddler is doing.
“I thought he would be really insecure about this and he’d probably want to find some way to get into the [Riddler’s] mindset, like in ‘Manhunter’ or ‘Mindhunter’ — this idea of profiling somebody, so you can predict his next move,” says Reeves.
So Reeves shot a scene in which Batman snuck inside Arkham, arriving at the door of a specific inmate.
“And this guy says, ‘It’s almost our anniversary, isn’t it?’” says Reeves. “You realize that they have a relationship, and that this guy obviously did something, and Batman somehow got him into Arkham.”
As they talk, Batman tells Joker he wants to know how Riddler thinks. Joker’s reply, as relayed by Reeves: “What do you mean, you want to know how he thinks? You guys think the same.”
Reeves smiles. “What he’s really doing is getting into Batman’s head,” he says. “And [Batman] is resisting this idea violently. And so that’s what that scene was. It was a scene to unsettle him.”
Ultimately, however, Reeves felt that the scene hit the same beat accomplished elsewhere in the movie. So he cut it. “It wasn’t necessary,” he says. “It was one of those scenes where, given how complex the narrative was, by taking it out, it kept the story moving in a way it needed to.”
