HBO Max is reportedly planning a spin-off series to The Batman that will showcase Colin Farrell’s interpretation of The Penguin character, aka Oswald Cobblepot.
Farrell confirmed this week that Matt Reeves is connected with the project though he won’t be directing the spin-off.
As reported by Entertainment Tonight, Farrell was quoted as saying: “Matt’s up to his bollocks, you know, hovering over the keyboard and just planning the story because he’s just so meticulous. He’s so obsessive about what he does, but he’s all over The Penguin [series] as well. I mean, he’s not gonna direct it but he’s all over the structure of the scripts and who’s gonna direct them. And so, it’s exciting.”
In the same interview, Farrell also expressed his own unbridled enthusiasm for The Penguin project: “Oh my god, you kidding me?! It’s so much fun, are you joking [with] me? I’ve been around the block man.
That was an easy sport, I mean… it was a joy… I read the first script of what I think will be six or eight hours.
It was so tasty.”
The Penguin series will reportedly begin filming in February of 2023, with a likely release date a year later.
Farrell had debuted earlier this year as the nemesis character in Reeves’s The Batman, where he played the villain against Robert Pattison’s superhero. The role was truly transformative for the Irish actor: as reported on the Dark Horizons website, “Because he wore prosthetics and heavy makeup, the role left him so unrecognizable that the actor would venture out into public during production and nobody was the wiser.”
While The Batman 2 is already in the works, it’s not yet clear whether Farrell will be reprising The Penguin in any new sequel. The actor reportedly told Entertainment Tonight that things are still getting sorted out, and there is as yet no final script. Farrell is currently doing promotional work for Ron Howard’s Thirteen Lives, about a cave rescue in Thailand–not the Bat Cave, it should be noted.