It’s learned the Matt Reeves’ Arkham Asylum series has been canceled at the MAX streaming service, at least for now.
The series was originally going to be a part of Reeves’ The Batman universe and be about the Gotham City PD set a year prior to the movie.
Then Reeves revealed the series was changed into an Arkham Asylum series, and it would have centered on the villains of Batman.
Weeks prior to the big DCU announcement from James Gunn and Peter Safran, it was announced The Staircase creator Antonio Campos was developing the Arkham series.
It was then confirmed by Gunn that the Matt Reeves’ Arkham Asylum series had been grandfathered into Gunn and Safran’s DCU and would be a part of the DCU and not a part of the Robert Pattinson Batman universe.
Now the trades are reporting the series isn’t moving forward at Warner Bros. Discovery’s Max streaming service. However, they say the series could always resurface in some form down the road.
Update: Joe Otterson who wrote the article on Variety also said via X: “To clarify, James Gunn said months ago that the Arkham Asylum show would be part of the DCU rather than Reeves’ world of The Batman. But there is now no Arkham show in active development at DC. They could always revisit later with a new writer but the original project that Max committed to in 2020 is dead. That was the Gotham PD show that Reeves said ‘kind of evolved’ into an Arkham show. Anything developed now would be wholly new and separate from that.”
that Max committed to in 2020 is dead. That was the Gotham PD show that Reeves said “kind of evolved” into an Arkham show. Anything developed now would be wholly new and separate from that
— Joe Otterson (@JoeOtterson) July 6, 2024
The news is rather interesting as this is the second Matt Reeves Batman project to have been scrapped by Warner Bros. at Max.
Reeves, along with J.J. Abrams and Bruce Timm, are behind the upcoming Batman: Caped Crusader animated series that originally was at Max, but was canceled, and then moved to Prime Video.
There have also been rumors that Reeves’ Batman sequels are getting canceled, but James Gunn recently shot those rumors down.
Matt Reeves’ Arkham Asylum series was never originally a part of James Gunn’s DCU plans, so maybe it’s for the best.
Gunn is developing his own version of Batman with Brave and the Bold, but that too has recently said to have problems as it’s rumored Andy Muschietti is no longer directing. Gunn never replied to the rumor.
Obviously with whatever Gunn is doing with his version of Batman would have had to sync up to the Matt Reeves’ Arkham Asylum series, so again, maybe it’s for the best, at least from Gunn’s perspective, that the Arkham series is no longer moving forward in the DCU and on the Max streaming service.
Matt Reeves has his The Batman: Part II coming out October 2, 2026, and The Penguin series gets released on Max in September.
I’ll also throw this out there: If Gunn or anyone is looking for a location for Arkham Asylum, they should check out the former psych center in Buffalo, NY which was designed by architect H.H. Richardson and erected in 1871:
