The Batman Director Matt Reeves Still Developing Arkham Asylum Spinoff Series

By Cameron Bonomolo

The animated Batman: Caped Crusader may be up for grabs at competing streaming services, but The Batman spinoff series focused on Arkham Asylum remains in the works at HBO Max. Filmmaker Matt Reeves, who launched his "Batverse" with the standalone feature film reboot starring Robert Pattinson as a younger Dark Knight earlier this year, continues to work on that as-yet-untitled series alongside another spinoff centered on Colin Farrell's the Penguin. Both Arkham Asylum and Penguin are among the live-action DC titles said to be moving forward under Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav, who axed straight-to-HBO Max movies Batgirl and Wonder Twins before shopping Caped Crusader to rival streamers as part of the merged company's aggressive cost-cutting measures. 

In an article about DC's state of affairs as Warner Bros. Discovery zeroes in on filling its DC chief position, Variety reports the tentatively-titled Arkham and Penguin spinoffs remain in the works alongside the Reeves-directed Batman 2. All three are in the development process under Reeves, who this week signed a multi-year overall deal between WBD and his 6th & Idaho production company. 

As part of that first-look deal, Reeves re-upped with Warner Bros. Television Group, behind the live-action series set within the world he established in The Batman. Reeves, along with Bruce Timm (Batman: The Animated Series) and J.J. Abrams (Lost), is an executive producer of Batman: Caped Crusader, a new animated series and reimagining of the Batman mythology. 

While not connected to Reeves' "Batverse," Caped Crusader went into development under the former WarnerMedia regime for HBO Max but will now stream on whichever rival service wins an ongoing bidding war. 

Penguin, which stars Farrell as the Gotham City gangster he originated on the big screen in The Batman, is on track to shoot early next year with Lauren LeFranc writing and serving as showrunner of the series executive produced by Reeves, Dylan Clark, Farrell, and LeFranc. The untitled Arkham Asylum series, originally developed as a police corruption drama titled Gotham PD, will center around Arkham State Hospital: a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane that currently houses the Riddler (Paul Dano) and the Joker (Barry Keoghan). 

"We're doing this Penguin series and one of the great things about that is Colin Farrell — he's like you've never seen him. He's so incredible and he's a scene-stealer. Along the way, we thought maybe we could do [Oz] as a series," Reeves previously told The Toronto Sun. "So I talked to HBO Max and showed them Colin in the movie and spoke to them about what this could be and they said, 'Let's do it.' So we're doing that and we're doing another series that connects to Arkham [Asylum]." 

Other DC series set to stream on HBO Max include Season 2 of Peacemaker, The Suicide Squad spinoff created by James Gunn and starring John Cena, and the live-action Green Lantern Corps from prolific producer Greg Berlanti. Sarah Aubrey, HBO Max's Head of Original Content, is overseeing Max Original dramas and is said to be focusing on "big, largely IP-based tentpoles" for the soon-to-merge HBO Max/Discovery+ service, including the previously announced Dune spinoff series and the fast-tracked IT prequel series Welcome to Derry. 

The Batman is now available to stream on HBO Max.

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