'Boardwalk Empire' Writer Brings a New Batman TV Show to HBO
Terrence Winter is one of the best writers of all time. And now he's bringing Batman to the small screen in a new way.
You know his work – The Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire, Vinyl – it's among some of the best ever written. And now, Terrence Winter is bringing his talents to Gotham City. That's right, per HBO Max, a new Batman TV show is coming to the small screen.
"The groundbreaking television series to be written by Winter is set in the world Reeves is creating for The Batman feature film and will built upon the motion picture’s examination of the anatomy of corruption in Gotham City, ultimately launching a new Batman universe across multiple platforms. The series provides an unprecedented opportunity to extend the world established in the movie and further explore the myriad of compelling and complex characters of Gotham. This marks the first television project for Reeves under his recently announced overall deal with the Warner Bros. Television Group."
Having a companion piece to the Matt Reeves movie is really interesting. It sets up an expanded universe where characters can come and go, but may not all need origin stories.
Reeves seems stoked about the idea as well. “This is an amazing opportunity, not only to expand the vision of the world I am creating in the film,” said Reeves, “but to explore it in the kind of depth and detail that only a longform format can afford — and getting to work with the incredibly talented Terence Winter, who has written so insightfully and powerfully about worlds of crime and corruption, is an absolute dream.”
I'm very excited for what's to come, and this is a sneaky way to add a police procedural into a streamer that also wants to work the DC angle while not alienating daily viewers as well. This will play as a nice accompaniment to the Snyder Cut.
I also think if this show does well it can drastically change the way we view expanded universes.
Well, sort of.
Marvel has touched on this with their TV shows, but DC nailing this gives them an opportunity to stop pushing shared universes with all their Justice League characters, and instead, focus on individual characters, their stories, and expand the universe around them specifically.
It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. There is a general vibe that police shows are not popular right now, I wonder if that sentiment will echo into the comic universe.
Only time will tell.
