Batman series about the Gotham police fighting against creative differences

Terence Winter, creator of “Boardwalk Empire” and executive producer of “The Sopranos,” finally talks about the spinoff series “The Batman” based around the Gotham Police Department, which failed to get off the ground. Winter and “The Batman” director Matt Reeves were developing the show ahead of the release of the 2022 comic book movie, but Winter dropped out a few months after the show was announced. He was later replaced by Joe Barton before the entire show fell apart.

“The idea was that we were going to do a 1970s cop show – something similar to Sidney Lumet’s 1981 crime and police drama ‘Prince of the City,’ but set in the Gotham City Police Department,” Winter said during an interview on The Playlist. Podcast ‘Bingeworthy’. “That would be it [‘70s] feeling. It was going to be a modern-day cop similar to a third-generation Gotham City cop, and Gotham City was largely corrupt. And this is the man we meet today who realizes he’s a little on the wrong side. The Batman was someone who lived in that world, but you never really saw him. And it was basically all about the police station and kind of this guy.

Winter said that at one point Reeves “wasn’t feeling it” regarding what the duo was cooking up for the series, which resulted in Winter’s departure from the project. The Gotham PD show was eventually scrapped in favor of developing a show about Colin Farrell’s Penguin, who debuted in “The Batman.” That series, officially titled “The Penguin,” is now airing on HBO and Max.

“That’s great, good for them,” Winter said. “Like I said, it was originally Matt’s idea, and, you know, more power [him]. Sometimes you are creatively on the same page; sometimes you’re not. Or you go off on the wrong foot and think, “Oh, we should do this, but you know what, this just doesn’t really work.” And since there was ‘Gotham’, the show ‘Gotham’ definitely took place in the Gotham City Police Department. [It] kind of stepped on the toes of our idea, even though ours would be completely different. I love ‘Penguin’. I think they did a great job.”

In an interview with Entertainment weekly earlier this year, Reeves said the Gotham PD show and another spinoff series in development about Arkham Asylum were being scrapped after HBO executives suggested they focus more on “major characters” from the Batman universe.

“They said, ‘We like what you’re doing, and we want to lean more into the big characters,’” Reeves said, adding that elements from the canceled Gotham PD show eventually made their way into “The Penguin.”