Don’t Expect HBO Max’s Batman TV Show To Be A Gotham Copycat

David Mazouz as Bruce Wayne and Ben McKenzie as James Gordon in Gotham.

HBO Max is getting ready for a new Batman series that will be focused on the Gotham City Police Department. The basic premise is similar to Fox’s Gotham series that ran for five seasons, but the show’s writer is making sure that people know they are both different.

Since HBO Max’s new GCPD show was announced, some fans have been making plenty assumptions about the premise of the series, since no actual plot has been revealed, whether a different version of Gotham or something else entirely. Writer Joe Barton replied to a tweet on Twitter that questioned how different the series will be to Fox’s Gotham:

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Gotham ran on Fox for five seasons and was a prequel series based on pre-Batman Gotham City when Bruce Wayne was still a kid. The series only came to an end in 2019, which would be soon to consider reboots or remakes, and some have been thinking that the new GCPD series would amount to Gotham 2.0 or something similar, and as one person pointed out on Twitter that it was pretty annoying. In a tweet that has since been deleted from his account, Joe Barton responded:

Yeah man, personally wouldn’t be that interested in remaking a show that ended like 5 minutes ago

GCPD will mark the latest Batman series and the first for HBO Max. There isn’t too much information on the series, or what exactly will become of it. Whether or not it will be a Batman prequel like Gotham seems to be out of the running, according to Joe Barton. Which means there are still plenty of possible storylines. It’s possible that it won’t revolve around or even feature Batman or Bruce Wayne, rather what Gotham was like before or after him.

Gotham City has decades of history from various projects, ranging from the comics to television shows to movies, to even more new ideas that can be pulled from. Gotham was a series that included iconic storylines and characters from the Batman comics, but still worked on its own without the Dark Knight and with Bruce Wayne before he was Batman.

The GCPD will be a prequel to Matt Reeves’ 2022 film. With network restrictions on storylines or more serious language, HBO Max could see that as an advantage since they will be able to have more freedom. Joe Barton is adamant that GCPD will be different from the Fox series and that he is far from interested in remaking a series that ended barely two years ago, or in his words “5 minutes ago.”

More details on GCPD will likely pop up in the coming months so stay tuned! In the meantime, Gotham is available to stream on Netflix if you want to relive the Batman prequel series, along with plenty of other options!

Megan Behnke
Freelance TV News Writer

Passionate writer. Obsessed with anything and everything entertainment, specifically movies and television. Can get easily attached to fictional characters.