DC Puts Poison Ivy Back on HBO After an August Pass

Lauren LeFranc is in talks to produce a Poison Ivy series for Warner Bros. and DC, a project HBO would house if it ever gets ordered. People familiar with the file say she would produce only, not write it, and that no writer or lead is attached.

The talks became public on October 21, 2026, seventy days after DC and HBO passed on Poison Ivy pitches, and fifteen days after the Paramount-Warner merger closed. The character is back. The show is not.

DC Passed on Poison Ivy in August

On August 12, 2026, industry reporter Jeff Sneider wrote that DC and HBO had passed on Poison Ivy and Catwoman pitches while taking two announced series off the active board. Waller, the Viola Davis project, was no longer moving. Paradise Lost, the Wonder Woman prequel set on Themyscira, was no longer moving either. Booster Gold stayed in the pile, with a search on for a new writer.

That August pass was sold as a pullback from superhero television. The October talks do not restore Waller or Paradise Lost, and they do not restore Catwoman. They restore the one rejected name that now has The Penguin’s showrunner standing next to it, in a producing credit, with the script still unassigned.

THE DC TELEVISION LEDGER

It is not clear whether the October file is the August pitch with a new credit on top, or a different Ivy show that used the same name. The people describing the talks have been tracking a Poison Ivy project for months and say work was paused for the merger. The character is the through-line. The paperwork is not.

What a Producer-Only Deal Leaves Open

LeFranc created, wrote, and ran The Penguin, the 2024 HBO series that followed Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb out of Matt Reeves’s The Batman. On this file she would be a producer. Sources say there are currently no writers attached, which means there is also no named showrunner and no draft the network can order from.

In August 2025 she signed a two-year deal with HBO and launched Acid and Tender Productions, the banner already listed among The Penguin’s producing companies. She has two Emmy nominations of her own from that series, as executive producer and as writer of the episode A Great or Little Thing. A producing job on Poison Ivy fits the deal she already has. It does not recreate the job she did on Oz Cobb.

Her earlier credits include Impulse, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Chuck, and My Own Worst Enemy. None of those shows is this one, and none of them answers who would sit in the writers’ room if HBO ever picks the series up.

WHAT IS NOT ATTACHED

• A writer: LeFranc is not writing the series, and no other writer is named.
• A showrunner: No one has been announced to run the room.
• A lead: No actress is in talks to play Dr. Pamela Isley.
• A pickup: HBO is the likely home if the show is ordered, and it has not been ordered.
• A universe: The series would not sit in Reeves’s Batman world, and a DCU assignment has not been confirmed.

Fan posts treated the leak as a series launch. Collider-style recaps called her the creator coming back to Gotham. The actual terms are thinner: in talks, producer only, no pages.

The Skydance Close Unfroze the File

Plans to move the Poison Ivy project had been on pause because of the Paramount and Warner Bros. merger. That deal closed on October 6, 2026, with the combined company going forward as Skydance under chairman and CEO David Ellison. Fifteen days later, the LeFranc talks were on the record.

The pause explains the calendar more cleanly than a sudden change of heart about eco-terrorists on prestige television. A file that could not move during a merger can move once the merger is done, especially when the producer already has an HBO deal. It still has to be written.

THE PATH BACK TO HBO

1. August 19, 2025: LeFranc signs a two-year deal with HBO and launches Acid and Tender Productions.
2. August 12, 2026: DC and HBO pass on Poison Ivy and Catwoman pitches; Waller and Paradise Lost leave active development.
3. October 6, 2026: The Paramount-Warner merger closes and the company proceeds as Skydance.
4. October 21, 2026: LeFranc is in talks to produce Poison Ivy, not write it, with no series order.

Ellison’s close does not, by itself, order a show. It does take the freeze off a project people inside Warner Bros. and DC had already been tracking. The next missing piece is a writer willing to own Pamela Isley on the page.

24 Nominations Bought a Second Look

The Penguin collected 24 Primetime Emmy nominations and 9 wins in 2025, including Cristin Milioti’s lead actress prize for Sofia Falcone. LeFranc’s writing nomination sat in that same pile. The series was the first live-action spinoff from a Batman movie, and it did the job without putting Robert Pattinson on screen.

That haul is the practical reason an Ivy file can reopen after an August pass. HBO already paid for a villain series that awards voters treated as crime drama. Putting LeFranc’s name on another Batman adversary is how a studio restages a rejected character as prestige rather than as one more superhero hour.

THE PENGUIN HAUL

• Nominations: 24, including limited series, writing, and the lead acting races.
• Wins: 9, with Milioti’s actress prize among them.
• LeFranc: Nominated as executive producer and as writer of A Great or Little Thing.
• Home: HBO in 2024, the same network named as Ivy’s destination if a pickup comes.

The loophole has a limit. The Penguin had Farrell in the makeup chair, Milioti across from him, and LeFranc on the scripts. Poison Ivy has a producing conversation. Awards capital can reopen a door. It cannot draft episode one.

Matt Reeves’s Gotham Is Off Limits

Sources say the series would not be part of Reeves’s Batman universe, the crime saga that includes The Batman and The Penguin and is led on screen by Pattinson. That single fence is the part of the leak that most of the conversation missed, or refused to hear.

Reeves’s Gotham is wet asphalt, low magic, and men in rooms. Poison Ivy’s power set is plant control, toxin immunity, and pheromones, a toolkit that fights that style. Taking her out of the Reeves world is the first decision that treats the character as herself rather than as a green coat on another Oz Cobb plot.

Whether the show would then sit inside James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU is unconfirmed. Some recaps assumed mainline by process of elimination. The people describing the talks have not said that. Until a writer is hired, the universe is a blank that everyone else is filling in.

The other misread is scale. A producer-only credit on a show with no pages is not a second season of The Penguin with a different wig. LeFranc has already said she needs an emotional connection before she will write a character. Producing someone else’s Ivy is a different contract.

A Character Who Has Never Headlined Live Action

Poison Ivy, Dr. Pamela Isley in the comics, first appeared in Batman No. 181 in 1966. DC still calls her Batman’s Floral Femme Fatale: an ecoterrorist who uses pheromones to control people and the plant life around her as an army, and who has also been written as someone who protects other women who have been hurt. The official copy frames her as conflicted, not as a two-note seductress.

She has never been the main focus of a live-action movie or series. Uma Thurman played her in 1997’s Batman & Robin. Bridget Regan played her on Batwoman. Peyton List, Clare Foley, and Maggie Geha played versions of her on Gotham. Lake Bell voices her on the adult animated Harley Quinn series, which is the only recent DC Studios project to use the character with any regularity.

There’s a ripe world of Rogues Gallery characters out there that are fascinating potentially. So there’s always something there that if you dig deeply, then you can decide, oh, do I feel like I have a personal connection enough to this to either keep going and tell a more evolved story with Oz or tell a story through a different lens, a different character.

Lauren LeFranc, showrunner, on the Bingeworthy podcast, November 14, 2024

That 2024 answer was about whether The Penguin should continue, not about a 2026 producing job. It still names the opening she is now standing in. Ivy fits the test she set for herself, the complicated woman with a moral argument and a body count. The catch in the present tense is that she would not be the person digging.

Catwoman Is Still Waiting

The August pass bundled Ivy with Catwoman. Only one of those names came back. Selina Kyle has a recent live-action turn in Reeves’s film, which may be why a standalone felt redundant to the people who said no. It is also why the leftover stings: the more famous cat did not get the producer with the Emmy pile.

The louder confusion around the leak is not fandom math. It is a studio adding another Batman villain series while a DCU Batman film is still unmade, after telling the town it was done with this kind of hour. Clayface is already headed for Gunn’s world as a movie. Ivy would be television, maybe. The slate looks like a brand collection until someone writes a pilot.

HBO has not ordered Poison Ivy. Warner Bros. and DC have not named a writer. No one has been cast as Pamela Isley, and the show is not a chapter of Reeves’s Gotham. Seventy days after a pass, and fifteen days after Skydance closed, the file that moved on October 21 still has no pages and no star.