Variety has reported that HBO Max have tapped Antonio Campos (The Staircase) to serve as the showrunner on the Arkham Asylum series. This marks the third showrunner the series has had since it was originally announced more than two years ago.
The Arkham Asylum series began life as a show set in the Gotham City Police Department. Terence Winter (Boardwalk Empire) was set to write and executive produce the spin-off of Matt Reeves’ The Batman, but Winter left the series due to creative differences. Joe Barton (The Lazarus Project) then boarded the series, only to leave as well when the focus shifted to Arkham Asylum. Should Antonio Campos stick around long enough, he will also direct and executive produce the Arkham Asylum series.
Matt Reeves confirmed earlier this year that the GCPD series had indeed evolved. “The GCPD thing, that story has kind of evolved,” Reeves said. “We’re actually now moving more into the realm of exactly what would happen in the world of Arkham coming off our movie and some of the (villain) characters, again in their origins. Almost leaning into the idea of, it’s like a horror movie or like a haunted house that is Arkham. The idea of, the way that Gotham is a character in the movie, I really want Arkham to exist as a character so you’d go into this environment and encounter these characters in a way that feels really fresh. So in our work on Gotham, that story started to evolve and it started feeling like, ‘Wait, we should really lean into this.’ And that’s kind of where that’s gone.” This isn’t the only Batman spinoff series in the works as Colin Farrell is also set to reprise his role of Penguin in a series revolving around the villain’s rise to glory.
Antonio Campos most recently served as the writer, director, executive producer, and showrunner on The Staircase, a true-crime limited series which starred Colin Firth as Michael Peterson, a writer convicted of murdering his wife Kathleen Peterson (Toni Collette), who was found dead at the bottom of the staircase in their home. The series debuted on HBO Max in May 2022.