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Before James Gunn and Peter Safran took the reigns as co-chairs of DC Studios, Matt Reeves had quite the vision for bringing Gotham to life on the big and small screens. In addition to his trilogy of Batman films, Reeves had several streaming series in the works and while one of those, The Penguin, is set to debut on Max this September, news has come down that development on another series has been halted.

According to Variety, the untitled Arkham Asylum streaming series will no longer move forward.

The GCDP thing, that story has story has kinda evolved. We’ve actually now [moved] more into the realm of exactly what would happen in the world of Arkham as it relates coming off of our movie, and some of the characters… almost leaning into the idea of… it’s like a horror movie or a haunted house that is Arkham.

–Matt Reeves on the evolution of his Arkham project

Originally imagined as a Gotham City Police Department series to be written by Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter and set within Reeves’ universe, the premise of the project changed over time. By March 2022, the GCPD project became an Arkham Asylum-centric series that would involve horror elements with Joe Barton taking the reigns on the script. In the fall of 2022, Antonio Campos took over as showrunner and development continued. Now, the long-gestating project is no more.

The idea, again the way that Gotham is a character in the movie, I really want Arkham to exist as a character. You go into this environment and encounter these characters in a way that feels really fresh. And so in our work on Gotham, that story started to evolve, and it started feeling [like], ‘Wait, we should really lean into this.’ And then that’s kinda where that’s gone.

–Matt Reeves on the evolution of his Arkham project

Even with the show not moving forward, Reeves‘ vision for Gotham still lives on. In addition to Colin Farrel’s The Penguin series, Robert Pattinson will return in The Batman Part II in 2026.

Source: Variety

This article first appeared on Murphy's Multiverse and was syndicated with permission.

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