Scrapped The Batman Spinoff Would’ve Built on the Movie’s Story

After The Batman released, WB announced that Terence Winter would be developing a Gotham City Police Department TV spinoff. The series was eventually canceled, but now, with The Penguin being a massive hit, it has made everyone wonder what this other The Batman spinoff would have been like.

Winter, who is known for Boardwalk Empire, was set to helm a second spinoff series, which we only knew was set in the same Gotham as The Batman and would focus on the members of the police department. Now, in an interview with The Playlist, the showrunner has revealed exactly what the story was going to be and how it connected with the film:

“The idea was that we were going to do a 1970s cop show — something that felt like Prince of the City but in the Gotham City Police Department,” said Winter. “It was going to have that ’70s feel. It was going to be a present-day cop who is like a third-generation Gotham City cop, you know, his grandfather, his dad, and, you know, and Gotham City was largely corrupt. And this is the guy we meet in the present day who’s realizing that he’s kind of on the wrong side. The Batman was somebody that lived in that world, but you never really saw him. And it was really all about the police department and sort of this guy.”

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Prince of the City is a gritty, epic neo-noir from Sidney Lumet, which fits right into the crime thriller style that Matt Reeves’ universe plays in. And as The Penguin has already shown, a crime series works great in this world.

So, why did it get canceled? For a surprising reason, actually. Usually, when a series like this gets the ball rolling, it’s hard to make that ball stop, but that’s exactly what Reeves did, at least according to Winter. As the series went through multiple iterations through development, it just never felt right, evidently. Reeves “wasn’t feeling it.” Winter also noted that the series would have overlapped a bit with Fox’s Gotham since that series has a similar premise.

Of course, the implosion of the entire streaming industry and WB CEO David Zaslav’s brutal cutting of content could have also impacted decision-making. However, James Gunn, the head of DC Studios, has said that Reeves’ universe has plenty of leeway and support from him, so it’s possible that, while this series didn’t make it, another like it may rise from the ashes.