Terence Winter shares what his Gotham P.D. would've been like

HBO’s Gotham P.D. series is officially defunct, but here’s what Terence Winter’s version would’ve been like. “The idea was that we were going to do a 1970s cop show— something that felt like [Sidney Lumet’s 1981 crime and police drama] Prince Of The City, but in the Gotham City Police Department,” he says on an upcoming episode of The Playlist‘s Bingeworthy podcast. “It was going to have that [‘70s] feel.” 

Coming from the creator of Boardwalk Empire, you know Winter could’ve nailed a period piece vibe. Beyond the stylistic influence, though, the series would’ve been set in the present day and follow a “cop who is like a third-generation Gotham City cop, you know, his grandfather, his dad… and Gotham City was largely corrupt,” Winter explained. “And this is the guy we meet in the present day who’s realizing that he’s kind of on the wrong side. The Batman was somebody that lived in that world, but you never really saw him. And it was really all about the police department and sort of this guy.”

Winter worked on the series for “a while,” but ultimately The Batman writer-director Matt Reeves, also an executive producer on the series, “wasn’t feeling it.” After Winter exited, Joe Barton (Giri/Haji) was brought on, “but that didn’t go anywhere. I have no idea what he did. And then I read about The Penguin,” Winter recalled. “And, you know, that’s great, good for them. Like I said, you know, it was Matt’s idea originally, and, you know, more power to [him]. Sometimes, you’re in sync creatively; sometimes, you’re not. Or you get off on the wrong foot thinking, ‘Oh, we should do this and go, Oh, you know what, this is just not really working.’” 

Gotham P.D., as a spin-off of Reeves’ The Batman, would’ve been designated an “Elseworlds” story, in other words, separate from the main DC Studios continuity overseen by James Gunn. At this point, there are plenty of different iterations of Gotham to choose from, including Gotham, an origin series that is “totally very different” from what Winter was envisioning for Gotham P.D. but nevertheless “kind of stepped on the toes of our idea a little bit.” But there’s no hard feelings, and Winter thinks the spin-off that did get made, Penguin, is “great.”