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Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter was supposed to plunge into the gritty depths of Gotham with a spin-off series from Matt Reeves’ 2022 film The Batman, but the project never saw the light of day. While other spinoffs from the film have emerged, such as The Penguin, Winter has now shed some light on what his axed series would have been, and how it would have fit the dark, murky image typically associated with the Caped Crusader – while also revealing that the show was stopped at the behest of Reeves.
In an interview with The Playlist, Winter said, “The idea was that we were going to do a 1970s cop show— something that felt like Prince of the City but in the Gotham City Police Department,” referring to director Sidney Lumet’s 1981 noir crime drama. Winter added of the project:
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. 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.”
Ultimately though, the series was scrapped because Reeves “wasn’t feeling it,” said Winter, going through several other iterations before being put to bed. He added that the project would have overlapped the prior Fox show Gotham. “Also, because there was Gotham, the show Gotham certainly took place in New York City, in the Gotham City Police Department. It kind of stepped on the toes of our idea a little bit,” Winter said, though he insinuated that some ideas from his show made it into The Penguin.
Winter is Best Known for ‘Boardwalk Empire’
While The Penguin continues the gritty crime motif often seen among Batman franchises, it would’ve been interesting to see where someone like Winter would’ve taken a Batman show. He is best known as the creator of Boardwalk Empire, which was set during Prohibition and followed the exploits of gangster Nucky Thompson as he tries to move up the ranks of the Atlantic City crime scene. The HBO series garnered massive acclaim and has been called one of the best shows in history.
However, The Penguin can’t be considered a slouch, either, as the first episode of the show has likewise been very well received both for its dark, criminal underworld tone and for Colin Farell’s performance as the villainous Oswald Cobblepot (or Oz Cobb, as he is rebranded for the show). An Arkhum Asylum spin-off was also in the works at one point, but hasn’t seen the light of day either.
The premiere episode of The Penguin is streaming now on Max.
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