Here’s a bit of a shocker for those tracking what is and isn’t in James Gunn’s rebooted DC Universe: Matt Reeves’ upcoming show about Arkham Asylum is set in the DCU, not the “BatVerse” that The Batman and Penguin are set in.
Gunn revealed the fact in a Thread conversation over the weekend as he had a day off and chose to spend much of it talking about work with fans. Based on an initial question about the issues with “spectacle” cinema, Gunn was eventually asked about Reeves’s upcoming “BatVerse” projects and if there was anything more coming. He replied, “Right now Matt is producing Arkham as a DCU series, so there’s just the two for now.” That, of course, confused everyone because people mostly assumed that everything Reeves was doing was set in the DC Elseworlds universe that The Batman was set in, but Gunn clarified that the Arkham show is indeed set in the DCU. “Yes. We love Matt as a director and producer so he’ll be producing stories both within his The Batman universe and within the DCU.”
After sharing this, Gunn also revealed that the Arkham series was never meant to be part of the BatVerse, even though it was in the works before he and Peter Safran arrived and took over all planning for DC projects. “It was one of the first pitches we bought when Peter and I came onboard. I don’t know the permutations it went through before that time,” he said.
For anyone who isn’t paying perfect attention to all the goings on with Gunn and his relaunch of DC’s film universe, that story may have made very little sense. The problem comes with the fact that DC had a very successful Batman film from Matt Reeves before Gunn took over, and plans to expand and continue it with a sequel and two TV shows (Arkham and Penguin) were put in place. WB wasn’t going to stop a successful franchise that was already set outside of its DCEU films, so when Gunn took over, he established the DC Elseworlds brand, where projects like these and Joker sequel Joker: Folie à Deux could live.
The assumption then was that the upcoming Arkham series, which will focus on the asylum where all of Batman’s villains get locked up, would be set in this “BatVerse” that Reeves established, but it appears that Reeves instead pitched Arkham to be in the DCU once Gunn came on, putting him squarely into both universes.
We do know that Batman exists in both universes, as one of the projects that Gunn announced in the first phase of the DCU, called Gods and Monsters, was a Batman film titled The Brave and the Bold. This means that the Batman connected to the Arkham TV show will not be the one portrayed by Robert Pattinson but instead by the actor Gunn casts in The Brave and the Bold.
