TheMovieman

'The Batman' TV Spinoff From Matt Reeves, Terence Winter Set at HBO Max

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/he...bo-max-1302540

fujishig

Seems like odd timing to announce this (though I realize this was all planned out long ago)

TheMovieman

The GCPD is notoriously corrupt so would play in for some... Also, things change so rapidly, who knows what the landscape will be once this airs (which probably won't be until late 2021 or 2022).

DJariya

Yeah this is going to be on television until 2022 at the earliest. HBO Max has a huge backlog of shows just trying to start filming again. And this one is still being written.

Mike86

Just do a true Batman series. I honestly feel like Batman could work so much better as a series rather than films. There’s so, so much that could be done. You could explore not only Bruce Wayne/Batman, but also his various Rogues and the Bat Family. This sounds like another version of Gotham, which wasn’t the worst but still has been done and left a lot to be desired.

Hokeyboy

Pretty much any comic book property would be better as a series. They are serialized by nature, which lends to the format perfectly. Look how great WATCHMEN turned out (especially compared with the movie).

Mike86

I somewhat agree. Certain characters seem better suited for a series versus a movie and vice versa. Not every character I feel could carry a series and have it remain interesting.

Case in point a lot of the CW shows. They start strong but start to lose steam after a while. Some of that is down to the fact that they’re CW shows, but partly I think not every character has an interesting enough assortment of characters to carry a full series.

I’ll be interested to see how the Marvel Studios shows on Disney+ turn out. I mean a lot of those characters are great in the films, but are they worthy of shows? Remains to be seen in my opinion.

I feel like with Batman though there’s such a wealth of interesting side characters. Plus there are so many classic arcs to base stories on. You could do multiple seasons of a show easily.

fujishig

The big difference between something like Watchmen and a CW show: A short series with a concrete, thought out plot and even a beginning and an end, as opposed to something that has to be padded to go through 20+ episodes to fill a schedule, with a budget that is stretched thin. Well that and the budget. Even something like the Netflix Marvel shows were just too long for their own good and could've really benefited from being shorter or at the very least, more tightly plotted.

I think superheroes can be adapted to either medium as long as the creators have a clear vision, though. I mean they have to be basing this one on the highly acclaimed Gotham Central, right?

Hokeyboy

Honestly, no serialized show should have 20+ episodes a season. I think 7-10 works fine. Otherwise you get so much garbage filler. Tell a story, make it count, and you're good. The "We need a 24 episode commitment so we can get 4 years and syndication!" model is dead in the water.

Otherwise you get endless "Kim Bauer vs. the Mountain Lion" episodes.

X-Men is a perfect example. Imagine 10 episodes a year instead of the shitcan movies we've had since 2014 (YES I'm including Days of Future Past. Piece of shit.) You could do the Dark Phoenix saga properly with all the setup, emotional investment, epic scope, and tragedy.

Poop in a melon

The Questyen

Gotham Central is the best Batman related series of all time so hopefully they take some cues from that.

whotony

Oh great another Batman show without Batman.

Mike86

I mean when Gotham was announced I sort of thought it would be somewhat based on Gotham Central. Probably too much to expect from a network show though.

ddrknghtrtns

An adaptation of Chris Claremont 's Uncanny X-Men and Marc Wolfman's New Teen Titans would be cool.

fujishig

We got, kind of, an adaptation of the Wolfman era NTT, sans Cyborg (for whatever reason) and changed up. It is... not good. Problem with the NTT is that they have been rebooted so many times,and arguably the most popular adaptation of them has very little in common with that era. Plus they are heroes built on legacy.

We are getting what is basically a JSA treatment in Stargirl that is about to be networked up as well. So we'll have to see if HBO Max series are more HBO (Watchmen) or DC Universe or CW. Hopefully the former.

Eric F

Didn’t we all think that was going to happen with Gotham?

Mike86

Also the fact that Gotham already exists makes this kind of a meh announcement. I’m sure it’ll be different, but there’s already kind of a feel for what the show could be like. Also Gotham Central is good as a comic series, but as a tv series it’s kind of just another of a bunch of cop shows only throwing in the occasional Rogue or a rare Batman spotting.

Hokeyboy

Gotham failed by shoving in way too many Batman elements and trying to establish some f'ed up "continuity" with the Batman legend. One of the reasons why -- at least for me -- it was unwatchable.

A solid procedural/serialized cop show a la the Gotham Central series would be something entirely different than Gotham was.

fujishig

Like I said before, it has to be more HBO and less CW for it to really work as a procedural.

~~ PAL ~~

Wasn't Gotham on Fox? What does it have to do with CW? Or is CW just short for "shit"?

beavis69

The Batman hill I will die on is saying that as far as movies and tv shows go, the Gotham series ranks only behind the Dark Knight movie and the 90s Batman cartoon for me. Gotham contained the best version of a number of characters, including Commissioner Gordon, Alfred, Riddler, Penguin, Mr. Freeze, and Catwoman. Hell, I would say Cameron Monaghan's portrayal of the Joker ranks only behind Ledger's. While the storylines were engaging they could have been a bit tighter with a shorter season, but that's the product of being on a major network. The only thing that was not great at all was Jada Smith's character and storyline.

I could see an HBO show being a grittier version of Gotham, but there is no indication of how many established characters will be a part of it.

fujishig

Ha, completely forgot it was on Fox. I guess I mean less longform traditional network TV stuff (20+ episodes, most of it filler) and more premium tv stuff (small episode count, make the budget count).

And it's not that I think a superhero show is too high and mighty for lowly network TV, but if you're going to do a police procedural in a superhero world I think you need the premium stuff to make it stand out (not only from Gotham, but the seemingly hundreds of other procedurals)

Shannon Nutt

It's hard to believe they didn't do a show about the Gotham PD before now.

Red Hood

I hope is based on that. Over 10 years ago, HBO executives at the time played with the idea of doing a show based on this series. The 2 things that killed was that HBO execs were not keen on having a Batman related show without Batman and the Green Lantern movie bombed. The execs thought that the comic book movies and TVs shows were a fad about to end and the project never got out of development. This is how Fox ended up later getting Gotham, which was supposed to be more about GCPD, but as many have said here before, they shoved in all these Batman ideas and themes that hampered the quality of the series.

If it's based on Gotham Central, then it can be done. Gotham is more than Batman and at least on this project, there's actually a Batman on the sides since it's now a spinoff of Reeves' film.

Hokeyboy

I don't think that's the case. 10 years ago we already had Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Iron Man, Hulk, IM 2, Man of Steel, Captain America, Thor in production, and Avengers in pre-production. Superhero movies were on the move.

But then WB never blew a chance to miss an opportunity, so...

fujishig

I can understand them being hesitant to have a Batman series without Batman, though. Birds of Prey was a bomb years before, and Arrow hadn't yet launched. Heroes, which had the novel idea of superheroes on TV, went out with a fizzle.

And even with the success of the MCU, Marvel really really resisted trying to parlay that into TV success: Agents of SHIELD basically got kneecapped after the first season was tightly entwined with the movie universe, so it's not like the cinematic universes crossed over into TV success all that often. In that respect, this series and the upcoming Disney + ones are really the first that will be recognized as "canon" in the cinematic universes (well, except for Peggy Carter). And it's basically because they all run on company owned streaming services that are desperate for content.