We can probably file this one under “It Will Never Happen”, but apparently Warner Bros. Discovery wants to explore another spin-off from the world of The Batman.
Why the cynicism? Because there was already another spin-off supposed to follow hot on the heels of The Penguin. This was the Gotham City Police Department show with Terence Winter as showrunner.
That was scrapped, and in its place was Arkham Asylum with Joe Barton showrunning. Gunn then said this would be part of the DCU. Then it wasn’t, it isn’t, and it was scrapped.
As part of the run in to The Penguin, a feature piece at EW included a quote from executive producer Dylan Clark who said they are still exploring other potential spin-offs from the Matt Reeves movie:
“There’s another television exploration we’re going to do. We’re looking at this entire world as it relates to who Batman is – the antagonists around them, all the crime that has to be navigated in the city – and trying to figure out where are the areas that are best to explore.”
The takeaway from all of this is that the world of DC remains a complete clusterfuck that couldn’t coherently plan and execute its way out of a paper bag, with multiple versions of Batman and several Jokers running around in various different mediums, even before a frame of Gunn’s Superman is seen.
They haven’t managed to successfully launch a shared multimedia universe around the DC characters yet, and here they are trying to launch another one around just The Batman. Remember, The Batman earned just over $750 million after it was delayed multiple times. Meanwhile, The Batman II has similarly been delayed to 2026.
Warner Bros. will simply never learn.