The Staircase writer Antonio Campos has been admitted to HBO Max’s Arkham Asylum
Criminals go to prison, criminals who dress like clowns go to Arkham Asylum
Earlier this year, a proposed The Batman spin-off about the GCPD cops was put on hold, with The Batman director Matt Reeves indicating at the time that he was also thinking about an HBO Max spin-off that would be set in Arkham Asylum (and in an exceedingly rare bit of editorializing from The A.V. Club’s news section, we noted that it was a better idea than the cop show). That idea seemed very early at the time, but now it seems to actually be moving forward.
That’s according to Variety, which says Antonio Campos has been tapped to write the project and that he’ll also serve as showrunner if it ends up getting picked up. Variety doesn’t sound overly optimistic about that, noting that Campos is the “third writer” brought onto the project, but that’s only if you operate on the assumption that this is just a different version of the original GCPD project… but since they seem to have totally different premises and totally different writers, it seems fair to count this as its own thing.
Either way, we don’t have any specifics about the show will be about, and while the GCPD show was billed as a The Batman prequel, we don’t know if the same is true for this incarnation of the project. If it’s not, though, we know there are at least two very famous residents currently writing “HA HA HA” and drawing question marks on the walls. Maybe this could expand on the relationship between the two friends who meet up at the end of The Batman? The other The Batman spin-off that’s in the works has Colin Farrell returning as the Penguin, so it’s not unheard of to have an actor from the movie be involved.
As for Campos, he was the showrunner of HBO Max’s dramatized version of The Staircase, which was at least partially a crime show (and Arkham is at least partially a place for criminals), so that seems to check out. The show hasn’t been officially picked up yet, so it might not end up happening, but having a writer on board is at least a noticeable step forward.