Draft:Untitled Gotham City Police Department series

The untitled Gotham City Police Department series is an unprocuded American television series created by Matt Reeves and Dylan Clark for the streaming service Max, based on the DC Comics organization Gotham City Police Department (GCPD). It was intended to be a prequel to the film The Batman (2022), exploring the corruption in the GCPD during the first year of Batman's career. The series was produced by 6th & Idaho and DC Studios in association with Warner Bros. Television Studios.

HBO Max ordered a series based on The Batman in July 2020 from that film's director and producer—Reeves and Clark, respectively—as well as Terence Winter, who was hired as writer and showrunner. Winter left that November due to creative differences, and was replaced by Joe Barton in January 2021. Following creative issues, the GCPD series was placed on hold by March 2022 when Reeves revealed that the project had evolved into a different series based on Arkham, though the two were being developed separately by that October. Both series were no longer moving forward by July 2024.

Premise
The series was set to follow members of the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD) during the first year of Batman's career and focus on the corruption within Gotham City and the GCPD.

Development
In July 2020, HBO Max announced that they had given a series commitment to a police procedural television series centered on the Gotham City Police Department (GCPD) from Matt Reeves and Dylan Clark, respectively the director and producer of the film The Batman (2022), as well as Terence Winter who would write and serve as showrunner for the series. Reeves said the series would be set in the universe that he was creating for The Batman, and described it as an "amazing opportunity" to explore that world and the elements of crime and corruption in the long-form television format. Reeves, Winter, Clark, Daniel Pipski, and Adam Kassan were set as executive producers, with Reeves's production company 6th & Idaho producing alongside Warner Bros. Television Studios. The untitled series was being referred to by several potential names, including GCPD and Gotham Central, the latter coming from a comic series of the same name. Richard Newby of The Hollywood Reporter felt the series would be able to modernize the GCPD and explore corruption in a similar way to the series Watchmen (2019).

During the virtual DC FanDome event in August 2020, Reeves revealed that the series would serve as a prequel to The Batman—which takes place during the second year of Batman's career—with the series set during the first year of Batman's career and focusing on the corruption in Gotham City and the GCPD. He also revealed that the series would be told from the perspective of one particular crooked cop, with the story of the series being a "battle for his soul". Familiar characters from the comics appear in addition to newly created ones. In November 2020, Winter left the project due to creative differences with the vision that Reeves and the other producers had for the series. A month later, DC Films president Walter Hamada explained that the studio was working with the filmmakers of its upcoming film slate to try to create interconnected spin-off television series for HBO Max based on many of those films, and the GCPD spin-off series from The Batman was one of these. Joe Barton was hired to replace Winter as showrunner in January 2021. In August 2021, a production listing gave the series' working title as Arkham.

In March 2022, Reeves said the GCPD series was no longer moving forward. He explained that HBO had creative issues with the project, especially with its focus on corrupt cops, and had encouraged him to focus on existing comic characters instead. Reeves revealed that development of the GCPD series had led to work on a new idea based on Arkham Asylum, Gotham's psychiatric hospital that is home to various Batman villains. In August, Reeves renewed his deal with Warner Bros. Television Studios, where he was developing this series and another spin-off, The Penguin (2024). Barton described the series' development as having been chaotic and stressful between his other commitments and the merger of Discovery, Inc. and Warner Bros. owner WarnerMedia that formed Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), saying he would "regret the show that we could have made".

By October 2022, the GCPD series was revealed to still be in development and was set to be separate from the Arkham series. James Gunn and Peter Safran were hired to serve as the co-CEOs of DC Studios at that time, and Gunn said that studio would oversee all DC productions moving forward. He had contacted Reeves about his projects by then. At that time, Reeves was developing the Arkham series for DC Studios's new franchise the DC Universe (DCU). When announcing the first projects for the DCU in January 2023, Gunn said any project that did not fit into the DCU's shared universe would be labeled as "DC Elseworlds" moving forward. This is the same as how DC Comics uses the Elseworlds imprint to mark comic books that are separate from the main continuity. Reeves' Batman shared universe was set to be a part of this label, including the GCPD series. By July 2024, the GCPD and Arkham series were both no longer moving forward at Max, the successor to HBO Max. There was still potential for a new project set within Gotham City to be developed.

Casting
With the series' announcement, The Hollywood Reporter said it was unclear if actors from The Batman such as Jeffrey Wright and Robert Pattinson would reprise their respective roles as James Gordon and Bruce Wayne / Batman for the series. In February 2022, Wright said there had been discussions about him appearing in the series but he was not yet entertaining the idea because he wanted to focus on the film's release first.

Release
The series was set to be released on the streaming service Max.