'The Batman' Gotham Police TV Series In The Works From Matt Reeves And Terence Winter For HBO Max

We haven't even seen any footage from The Batman yet, but there's already a TV spin-off in the works. The Batman director Matt Reeves and The Wolf of Wall Street writer Terence Winter are teaming to develop a Gotham police series set in the same world as The Batman. The show will explore "the anatomy of corruption in Gotham City, ultimately launching a new Batman universe across multiple platforms."

HBO Max is developing a TV series set in the world of The Batman. Rather than a straightforward Batman TV show, the series will focus on the Gotham City police department, and "will build upon the motion picture's examination of the anatomy of corruption in Gotham City, ultimately launching a new Batman universe across multiple platforms. The series provides an unprecedented opportunity to extend the world established in the movie and further explore the myriad of compelling and complex characters of Gotham."

Matt Reeves, director of The Batman, and Terrence Winter, writer on Boardwalk Empire, The Sopranos, and more, are working on the series, with Winter set to write. Regarding the project, Reeves said:

"This is an amazing opportunity, not only to expand the vision of the world I am creating in the film, but to explore it in the kind of depth and detail that only a longform format can afford — and getting to work with the incredibly talented Terence Winter, who has written so insightfully and powerfully about worlds of crime and corruption, is an absolute dream."

A similar idea was explored in the excellent Gotham Central comic book series created by Greg Rucka, Ed Brubaker, and Michael Lark. In that comic, Batman was only a peripheral character – he pops-up every now and then. Instead of being focused on the Dark Knight, Gotham Central went inside the Gotham police department and told stories about how normal cops deal with a city full of murderous supervillains. Think of it like Law and Order: Special Gotham Unit.

It's a bit of a weird time to launch a new police drama, what with country-wide protests against police injustice still going on. However, the show might be able to gleam onto current events since it's said to deal with corruption. Corruption was also very much a driving force of Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan's film that launched The Dark Knight trilogy.

One has to wonder if cast members from Reeves' The Batman – like Robert Pattinson, for instance – will pop-up in this series. There's no indication of when we might see the TV series, but The Batman is currently set to open October 1, 2021.