Max’s upcoming The Batman spin-off The Penguin has big shoes to fill after Matt Reeves’ refreshingly sharp take on DC’s infamous Dark Knight.
Showrunner and writer Lauren LeFranc’s previous credits include YouTube Originals production Impulse, rival Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., Chuck, and Hemlock Grove. Matt Reeves, Dylan Clark, and star Colin Farrell are executive producing.
What is the plot?
Matt Reeves’ vision for Gotham’s criminal underbelly was one of The Batman‘s defining qualities, and it is exactly what The Penguin is aiming to flesh out.
“The world that Matt Reeves created for The Batman is one that warrants a deeper gaze through the eyes of Oswald Cobblepot,” Farrell said in a statement following the streamer’s series announcement. Set a week after Bruce Wayne eliminated The Riddler, and the latter eliminated Gotham’s prime crime boss Carmine Falcone, The Penguin will trace Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot’s attempts to capitalize on and fill that power vacuum.
Per all the teasers from cast and crew we’ve received so far, the eight-part series is set to also delve into Oz’s backstory, and motivations. “There’s also a heartbroken man inside there,” the lead actor told ComicBook.com back in 2022.
“Tons of violence, abject darkness, and a man at great struggle to try and claw his way to the top,” Farrel further teased in a 2024 interview, saying he couldn’t believe how dark the show got. “It would be a hard R if it was in the cinemas.” That’s decidedly a tonal shift from the superhero TV of the last few years and an aesthetic that DC has been keen to adopt in an effort to distance itself from the more family-friendly Disney-influenced Marvel Studios.
Who stars in The Penguin?
Farrell alone should be enough to draw people in, but The Penguin is stacking up on excellent actors. How I Met Your Mother‘s Cristin Milioti is playing Falcone’s daughter Sofia, who is designed to be Cobblepot’s biggest competition. Rhenzy Feliz is stepping into his second major superhero-adjacent role after The Runaways and is rumored to play troubled youth, Victor Aguilar.
Supporting roles include Clancy Brown as iconic comics gangster Salvatore Maroni, Michael Zegen as Sofia’s brother Alberto Falcone, and Michael Kelly as Falcone family associate Johnny Vitti.
Shohreh Aghdashloo, Deirdre O’Connell, James Madio, Scott Cohen, Theo Rossi, Carmen Ejogo, François Chau, David H. Holmes, Craig Walker, Jared Abrahamson, and Mark Strong complete the cast.
Is there a trailer for The Penguin?
Colin Ferrel steps back into Mike Marino’s all-timer prosthetics, once again becoming unrecognizable as The Penguin in the teaser trailer for the upcoming show where his character muses about Rex Calabrese, the crime lord who used to be revered in his neighborhood. That’s a name that comics fans will recognize as the pre-Batman ruler of Gotham’s underworld.
The clip also gives eager viewers a glimpse of the rest of the cast and all the action that Max has in store for the end of the year.
When is The Penguin coming out?
Casey Bloys, chairman and CEO of HBO and Max, let it slip that The Penguin is slated for September 2024, despite no other previous official announcements beyond the vague release window of “Fall 2024.” Bloys told Variety the show will follow the second season of House of the Dragon, which wraps in August, on Max’s line-up.
The show was able to stick to its original rollout even after being impacted by the Hollywood strikes in the summer of 2023. It only finished filming in February of this year. Part of the principal photography took place on location all over New York City, including Brooklyn, Queens, The Bronx, and Harlem.
The Penguin will then likely set up The Batman – Part II which Matt Reeves is currently developing and is expected to hit theaters in 2026. No other projects within Reeves’ so-called “DC Elseworlds” micro-universe are in the works at this point. Reeves and Boardwalk Empire creator Terence Winter were previously pursuing a Gotham P.D. show but it wound up being morphed into an Arkham Asylum-focused series which James Gunn has confirmed is in the DCU and not in the same universe as The Batman.
