By For a brief while there back in 2020, “The Sopranos” writer/executive producer and “Boardwalk Empire” creator/showrunner Terence Winter was attached to serve as showrunner on a TV series tied to Matt Reeves’ “The Batman” film.
The film was on hold mid-production at the time due to the first wave of the COVID pandemic, nevertheless HBO Max handed out a straight-to-series order for the untitled series that was to focus on the Gotham City Police Department a year before the events of the film.
Specifics of the show’s story were under wraps, some speculating it would be based on the “Gotham Central” comic. Winter was attached for several months there before exiting the series in late 2020. Joe Barton took over showrunner duties, but the show was ultimately scrapped.
Now, Winter has spoken with The Playlist’s Bingeworthy podcast to promote the second season of “Tulsa King” which he produces, and discussed what his “Gotham P.D.” would’ve been like. He says:
“The idea was that we were going to do a 1970s cop show – something that felt like [Sidney Lumet’s] ‘Prince of the City’ but in the Gotham City Police Department. It was going to have that [1970s] 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.
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.”
Winter said that ultimately “The Batman” writer/director Reeves opted to take the series in a different direction which eventually resulted in “The Penguin” series which just premiered. Talking about how “Gotham P.D.” fell apart, Winter says:
“I worked on it for a while. And ultimately, you know, Matt wasn’t feeling it. And I left; I know they brought in another guy after me. I can’t remember his name, the guy who did ‘Tokyo Vice’. He worked for a while on it, but that didn’t go anywhere. I have no idea what he did. And then I read about ‘The Penguin.’
And, you know, that’s great, good for them. Like I said, you know, it was Matt’s idea originally, and, you know, more power to [him]. Sometimes, you’re in sync creatively; sometimes, you’re not. 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 Gotham, the show Gotham certainly took place in New York City, in the Gotham City Police Department, rather. [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 comments come as “The Penguin” seems to be the only spin-off of “The Batman” to have made it through. An “Arkham Asylum” spin-off was also in development and may still be alive, but seemingly hasn’t made much progress.
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