The Dark Knight won’t shine in the HBO Max spotlight anytime soon.
The streamer has scrapped a spinoff series from Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” film.
The prequel series was set to center on a corrupt cop in Gotham City — but the filmmaker revealed its cancellation on this week’s episode of MTV’s “Happy Sad Confused” podcast.
“One thing that we’re not doing, that I was gonna do . . . the Gotham police show, which, that one actually is put on hold. We’re not really doing that,” Reeves, 55, said.
The former “Felicity” producer continued that he desires to “maybe someday” revisit the Gotham City Police Department. In a separate interview with the Cyber Nerds over the weekend, Reeves divulged that HBO Max and Warner Bros. wanted the series to focus on Arkham Asylum — instead of what he described as his own “super cool” concept for the now-shelved series.
The spinoff was first announced back in July 2020, with Reeves set to collaborate with “Boardwalk Empire” creator Terence Winter and Warner Bros. Television.
In a statement at the time, it was announced that the series was going to “build upon the motion picture’s examination of the anatomy of corruption in Gotham City, ultimately launching a new Batman universe across multiple platforms. The series provides an unprecedented opportunity to extend the world established in the movie and further explore the myriad of compelling and complex characters of Gotham.”
“This is an amazing opportunity, not only to expand the vision of the world I am creating in the film, but to explore it in the kind of depth and detail that only a longform format can afford,” Reeves explained in a statement. “And getting to work with the incredibly talented Terence Winter, who has written so insightfully and powerfully about worlds of crime and corruption, is an absolute dream.”
Meanwhile, another “Batman” series — based on Colin Farrell’s character the Penguin — is still moving forward and is in development at HBO Max. The Irish actor will be executive-producing the project and will “delve into the Penguin’s rise to power in the Gotham criminal underworld,” according to TVLine.
“The Batman” is now in theaters and has been breaking box office records. It is currently the second-largest opening during the coronavirus pandemic era (just behind “Spider-Man: No Way Home”). The DC superhero flick earned $128.5 million on its opening weekend.
Tickets prices for the blockbuster film were raised by AMC Theatres earlier this month in an attempt to experiment with variable pricing, meaning they want to charge more money for certain, presumably higher-budget movies.
AMC’s CEO Adam Aron announced the news on March 1 during a web call about the company’s quarterly profits: “Currently, our prices for ‘The Batman’ are slightly higher than the prices we are charging for other movies playing in the same theaters at the same time,” he said.
The transition followed a few years after they raised weekend prices for some of its locations in the United States.
“AMC has been a bold thinker in the area of pricing,” Aron said. “One who is willing to take risk, and one who is willing to lead, and one who sees considerable upside opportunity for us ahead if we continue to be imaginative.”
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