In early 2023, Colin Farrell’s Penguin series will get underway as the first TV show to spin out of the events of The Batman. But more than two years ago, Warner Bros. was hoping to expand the film’s universe starting with another show focusing on Gotham City’s police department. The studio originally hired Terence Winter to write and executive produce the series. Now, Winter is finally opening up about why things didn’t work out.
Winter previously created HBO’s Boardwalk Empire, so the idea of him visiting Gotham had a lot of DC fans excited. Unfortunately, his tenure was short-lived. A few months after signing on, Winter exited the series, and Warner Bros. eventually replaced him with Joe Barton. At the time, Winter’s departure was blamed on creative differences, which he confirmed in a new interview with The Wrap. Regardless, he doesn’t harbor any ill will toward Matt Reeves or the other producers.
“We were going to do a gritty cop show that happened to be set in the world of the Gotham City Police Department,” said Winter. “I did a couple of outlines and just never really got it there, I guess, for Matt Reeves and company. We just decided to part ways rather than keep banging our heads against the wall, if we were seeing the show in a different way. But it was completely amicable and I know Joe Barton took a swing, as well. I think he ended up in the same place, and now they’re doing a show about the Penguin. I think it’s great.”
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Sadly, Barton’s version of the show isn’t hitting screens either. Reeves and his collaborators have since re-tooled the spinoff’s premise into a vehicle for Arkham Asylum. In any case, it sounds like Winter was genuinely excited by the challenge of playing around in the DC sandbox. He even discussed what drew him to the project in the first place.
“What was interesting to me was taking a serious look at a heightened animated or cartoony, I hesitate to call it cartoony, but fantasy world,” explained Winter. “Like putting the template of a gritty seventies cop show on top of Gotham City, this incredibly corrupt police department, that was really interesting to me. I’m not particularly a fan of the comic book genre. But when they presented that, and I said, ‘Oh, this is what I want to do,’ I got on board. But yeah, it really depends on the IP.”
Were you looking forward to seeing Winter’s take on the Batman mythos? Let us know in the comment section below!
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