DC fans may still end up seeing The Batman Universe‘s Arkham Asylum series, but not the version that was originally in development.
Following the critical and commercial success of the 2022 movie The Batman, featuring Robert Pattinson as the titular Caped Crusader, Warner Bros., DC, and filmmaker Matt Reeves unveiled plans for an expansive shared universe, with three spin-off series announced soon after. However, two years later, only one spin-off made it to air: The Penguin starring Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb. Set one week after the events of The Batman, the HBO limited series follows Oz as he attempts to take control of Gotham’s criminal underworld.
The other two spin-offs, centered around the Gotham City Police Department and Arkham Asylum, were scrapped, with parts of the former’s treatment being reworked into The Penguin. As for the Arkham spin-off, after DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn announced in December 2023 that the series would now be set in the forthcoming DC Universe, its fate was officially sealed in July 2024, with planned showrunner Joe Otterson confirming on the social media platform X that the project was dead.
However, during a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly, Reeves clarified that the Arkham spin-off is alive and well, just not in the form that it was originally conceived.
“The things that we’re talking about [now] are evolved versions of those things. It’s not like that just didn’t work. It was like, we need to evolve this,” he explained. “I 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.”
Reeves’ comments seem to imply that the Arkham spin-off is following the path that the GCPD spin-off took, becoming a supporting part of an entirely new spin-off instead of being the main focus of its own project. With The Batman producer Dylan Clark confirming in July 2024 that a new spin-off was in development, it’s possible that this project could be what evolved from the scrapped Arkham spin-off idea, although that remains pure speculation at this time.
Matt Reeves has finished The Batman Part II script
Following the conclusion of The Penguin, the next entry in The Batman Epic Crime Saga, as Reeves has dubbed the shared universe, will be The Batman Part II. Reeves recently confirmed that the script for the DC sequel, which he co-wrote with Mattson Tomlin, was finally finished, and that filming would kick off in early 2025. He also revealed that Farrell will reprise his role as Oz Cobb/The Penguin in The Batman Part II, alongside Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne/Batman.
The Batman Part II is scheduled to hit theaters on October 2, 2026.
