Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter has opened up about his shelved The Batman spin-off series that would have centered around the Gotham City Police Department.
Announced in 2020, the GCPD spin-off would have been set in the same world as Matt Reeves‘ 2022 superhero movie, The Batman. Winter was set to serve as head writer and showrunner on the series, which was in development at Max. However, after less than a year on the project, Winter departed the series, citing creative differences.
Four years later, with The Batman’s first spin-off, The Penguin, now airing on HBO, Winter has decided to share new details about his version of the GCPD spin-off, which was eventually shelved alongside a version of a spin-off set at Arkham Asylum.
“The idea was that we were going to do a 1970s cop show— something that felt like [Sidney Lumet’s 1981 crime and police drama] Prince of the City, but in the Gotham City Police Department,” Winter revealed during an 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, you know, and Gotham City was largely corrupt.”
He continued, “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.”
The Penguin includes some ideas from the shelved GCPD spin-off
Unfortunately for Winter, Reeves “wasn’t feeling” what he had come up with and opted to take the series in a different direction. After another couple of years in development, the spin-off was ultimately shelved, with Reeves revealing earlier this year that elements of the GCPD treatment eventually made their way into The Penguin.
Despite things not working out, Winter shared that there is no ill will between him and Reeves. “Sometimes, you’re in sync creatively; sometimes, you’re not,” he said. “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 [the Fox prequel series,] Gotham . . . [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 Penguin is great. I agree with you. I think they did a great job.”
The Penguin, set one week after the events of The Batman, follows Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb as he attempts to take control of Gotham’s criminal underworld. The eight-episode limited series is the second entry in The Batman Epic Crime Saga and will be followed by The Batman Part II in 2026.
The Batman and the first episode of The Penguin are currently streaming on Max.
