The Batman HBO Max spin-off names Joe Barton as showrunner

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

News coming out of Gotham City reports that Giri/Haji creator Joe Barton is the new showrunner on HBO Max's upcoming The Batman TV series. Barton is now set to board the project after Terence Winter exited the high-profile gig in November. In addition to serving as showrunner, Barton will also executive produce.

Back in August, The Batman director Matt Reeves revealed that the series is a prequel to his Batman Year Two movie, with the show set in Batman Year One when a “masked vigilante…starts to unsettle the city”. The series will hold a magnifying glass to the city’s corruption that “goes back many years” and is told from the point-of-view of a crooked cop. (per Deadline) The planned series is a part of Warner Bros.'s grand plan for an extended Batman universe that delves deep into the horrific inner-workings of Gotham City as well as the terrors that reside within.

Barton has enjoyed a tremendous amount of success thanks to his Tokyo and London-set crime drama Giri/Haji. Presented by way of Netflix and BBC, Giri/Haji revolves around a Tokyo detective who travels to London to look for his long lost younger brother, now believed to be posing as a Yakuza gangster and wanted for the murder of a Japanese businessman. His family’s honor, and the fragile peace between the warring gangs back home, is at stake. Barton was also a contributing writer for the AMC and Channel 4 sci-fi drama Humans as well as Netflix and BBC's Troy: Fall of a City. Barton is also the co-writer of Invasion, an upcoming sci-fi thriller from director Michael Pearce. Now in post-production, Invasion revolves around two brothers who embark on a journey with their father, who is trying to protect them from an alien threat. The upcoming film stars Riz Ahmen, Octavia Spencer, and Janina Gavankar, among several others.

How Barton's influence will alter HBO Max's plans for The Batman spin-off series is anyone's guess at this time, though it goes without saying that this could be Barton's most ambitious project to date. Lots of judgemental eyes will be on this one. I wish Barton and his team the very best in putting this show together.