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Earlier this month, The Penguin became the first spin-off from The Batman, but it wasn’t the only show that was originally under consideration by HBO and Max. An Arkham Asylum series and a show about the Gotham City PD were also in development before ultimately being dropped. Now, Terence Winter, the showrunner of the proposed GCPD series, has shed some light on his vision for the show.
“The idea was that we were going to do a 1970s cop show–something that felt like [Sidney Lumet’s 1981 crime series] Prince of the City, but in the Gotham City Police Department,” said Winter during his appearance on The Playlist‘s Bingeworthy podcast. “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 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.”
Winter went on to explain that he developed the show, but The Batman director Matt Reeves “wasn’t feeling it.” Regardless, Winter doesn’t harbor any bad feelings about the unrealized project.
“It was Matt’s idea originally, and… more power to [him],” said Winter. “Sometimes, you’re in sync creatively; sometimes, you’re not. Or you get off on the wrong foot thinking, ‘Oh, we should do this and go, Oh, you know what, this is just not really working.’ Also, because there was Gotham, the show Gotham certainly took place in New York City, in the Gotham City Police Department, rather. [It] kind of stepped on the toes of our idea a little bit, even though ours was going to be totally very different. I think [The] Penguin is great… I think they did a great job.”
Reeves recently indicated that the canceled spin-offs from The Batman haven’t been totally abandoned, and noted that he “would describe it less as something that didn’t work out and more as something that is still along a path toward arriving at its destination.”
The Penguin is airing Sunday nights on HBO and Max.
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