As fans wait for the upcoming series The Penguin on Max starring Colin Farrell, director of The Batman (2022), Matt Reeves, sheds light on why other spinoffs in that universe just haven’t worked out. Yet.
Reeves says the initial ideas for the television expansions, namely Arkham Asylum, Gotham PD, and what eventually became The Penguin, came while they were writing The Batman. “I was like, ‘Hey, you know what? I think there are some cool shows that we could do,” Reeves told Entertainment Weekly. “It was actually why I wanted to make our deal at Warner Bros.” The executives at Warner Bros came back, Reeves says, with ideas of their own, “[t]hey were like, ‘We like what you’re doing, and we want to lean harder into the marquee characters.”
Reeves says that’s how The Penguin was born. “What’s interesting is that, in the movie, the big red herring of the story is it seems like the person they’re looking for, that the Riddler’s pointing to must be the Penguin, some kind of informant,” Reeves says. Now the show will explore a “power vacuum” left behind by the end of The Batman.
Following Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) from the 2022 film, lead writer and showrunner Lauren LeFranc says the show will be Oz’s world, and we’re just living in it. “We’re living in the underbelly of the city. Oz is a mover and a shaker. He can’t always be trusted. He’s very smart and very methodical, but he’s also extremely impulsive. You can’t predict what he’s going to do.”
“It’s a Scarface story,” LeFranc says. “It’s a rise-to-power story of Oz before he really makes it to the top.”
You Can Still Get Your Fix of Gotham PD Life
If you’re disappointed that Reeves won’t be diving into the world of Gotham PD as a focus of a show, the show Gotham, might just tide you over until the premiere of The Penguin. The 2014 series ran for five seasons. It detailed Bruce Wayne’s life shortly after the death of his parents and followed James Gordon (Ben Mckenzie) and Harvey Bullock (Donal Logue) navigating the dangerously corrupt Gotham City.
Over the course of five seasons, fans see a lot of the pieces later found in Batman media slowly begin to fit together: the birth of Barbara Gordon, who would go on to become Batgirl and Oracle in the comics; a teenage Selina Kyle moving from petty thief to the high stakes anti-hero Catwoman; as well as the formation of villains such as The Penguin, The Riddler, and The Joker.
The upcoming series The Penguin will still retain elements from these shelved projects and, according to LeFranc, be the “bridge between the two films, referring to 2022 film and its sequel, slated for 2026. “We’re going almost directly into the second film Matt has planned.”
The Penguin will stream on Max in September.
via Collider