‘The Batman’ Director Matt Reeves Reveals How ‘The Penguin’ Was Born Out of False Starts

While director Matt Reeves was developing “The Batman,” his epic superhero movie starring Robert Pattinson as the Dark Knight, he ran into a problem — he had too much story.

At the time, the filmmaker asked Warner Bros. if perhaps they would instead want a miniseries. “What could be really cool is an HBO series – ‘Batman: Year Two,’ solving this crime,” Reeves remembered telling his executives. What he was told in response was, “We have nothing to do with HBO.”

But as Reeves was finishing the script for “The Batman” and gearing up for production, he met with WBD and said, “Look, I know these things are connected, but it’d be really exciting to do an HBO show where you can investigate these characters in a way that HBO would,” Reeves recalled to TheWrap.