Matt Reeves didn’t settle for The Batman being a huge critical and box office smash. He quickly set out building his take on Gotham City, announcing a series of shows that would expand what we know of the place defended by the hero. Of those shows, only The Penguin got off the ground and it’s been a tremendous success with next week’s season finale one of the most anticipated single episodes of the year.
While we’ve heard from others about plans to do even more spinoffs, Reeves himself is now confirming it while chatting with Andy Serkis (who played Alfred in The Batman) for InterviewMagazine.com.
“We have been talking, and it’s exciting because people are now embracing the show. My fantasy is coming into being, which is very exciting, and HBO has been incredibly supportive from the beginning. Now to see that the show is being embraced is really, really exciting. We have been talking about doing other shows. I wanted to make sure that we didn’t do the origin tale, which so many of the other series have done. I think the idea of being able to put a lens on these characters is a really exciting idea. It’s about cities and their dysfunction and the world and its dysfunction, which is what Batman stories are all about. They’re all about Gotham being a place that should be better. And you can have the experience of this almost novelistic epic crime saga, but you also just get these separate experiences. They have their own dramatic value. So Oz’s story is Oz’s story, and the idea is to do these other stories in the same way.”
It sounds as if Reeves is looking to do another series based on a single character’s experiences. He’s sorta teased doing one based on D.A. Harvey Dent aka Two-Face, but The Penguin introduces a bunch of characters that could be just as interesting.
, “It’s interesting because in a Batman movie, there are resources that are tremendous, so we’re able to do quite grand things, but we are handcuffed in other ways. When we were dealing with the ratings board, they were like, ‘You got to pull that back and this back.’ But with HBO, those handcuffs were removed. It gave us the ability to be really character-forward. Even just the way that Oz can be so deliciously profane. Now as we’re working on the movie, he can’t be quite as free with the profanity. There is a wonderful tone to the way Colin does it, so we have to find the right balance.”
In short, the training wheels are off and Reeves is free to craft the world of Batman in the way he sees fit. With two more movie sequels in the works and more spinoffs, that bodes well for all of us.
