“The Staircase” helmer Antonio Campos is set to direct the upcoming spinoff show of Matt Reeves’ “The Batman,” about Gotham City mental institute Arkham Asylum. Campos will also serve as showrunner and executive producer. Variety reported the news. IndieWire has reached out to representatives at HBO Max for comment. In addition to directing, show-running, and executive-producing HBO Max’s “The Staircase” with Maggie Cohn, Campos previously directed films including “The Devil All the Time” for Netflix, plus indies “Simon Killer” and “Christine.” He also helmed episodes of “The Sinner.” Campos is the third writer brought onto the DC project, originally given a series order in July 2020. The Arkham Asylum series was initially imagined as “Gotham City P.D.” with Terence Winter as showrunner. He left in November 2020 over creative differences, with Joe Barton stepping in to fill his shoes. But Barton and Warner Bros. split once the story moved from the underbelly of the Gotham police department to the Arkham Asylum.
Executive producer Reeves previously compared the Arkham Asylum show to a “horror movie or a haunted house,” with the institution existing as a “character.” The news comes on the heels of the announcement that James Gunn and Peter Safran are appointed the new co-CEOs of DC Studios, overseeing DCU content at Warner Bros. Discovery. While Reeves is busy working on “The Batman 2,” his “Batverse” expands even deeper with the Arkham show and a limited series centered on Colin Farrell’s character, The Penguin. The “Scarface”-like show will chart the rise of Oswald Cobblepot (aka The Penguin) and Gotham City’s crime syndicate. Lauren LeFranc will serve as writer and showrunner. Reeves will executive produce alongside Dylan Clark, who produced “The Batman.” Lead star Farrell confirmed that despite Reeves not directing the Penguin series, he is “all over the structure of the scripts and who’s going to direct them. And so, it’s exciting.” Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.
