It seems that Colin Farrell is going to be spending quite a bit of time as Oswald Cobblepot in 2023.
It has been known for a while that the Penguin spinoff series of The Batman would begin filming in Feb., but we weren’t sure how long it would be filming for. Speaking with Variety recently, Farrell said, “five or six months.”
The head of originals at HBO Max, Sarah Aubrey, recently spoke with Variety about multiple upcoming projects. Amongst them was what we can expect to see from the Penguin series. “Penguin will sit immediately after the end of The Batman and temporally before the events of the second movie. The show will come out in between the two movies. Now beyond that, it’s fun for the audience to know that it will be a bridge between the two, but the actual release date, I’m not at liberty to say.”
She went on to add, “The goal of this is to show what Oz’s life is like and that’s very much in the streets of Gotham, trying to get up and over as only the Penguin can. As a hustler and a strategist with his own ambitions. It is a great example of having the time over eight episodes to tell a longer-arc character story with a lot of delicious twists and turns and new characters. It’s very much going to be about Gotham at that street level, because he’s not flying around like Batman does. We are all embracing that as a very specific experience for audiences to have.”
Craig Zobel (The Mare of Easttown) has signed on to direct the first two episodes of The Penguin. He will also be serving as an executive producer on the project.
The Penguin project has been discussed for some time and was ordered straight to series shortly after the premiere of The Batman in March 2021.
Matt Reeves’ 6th & Idaho Productions, Dylan Clark Productions, and Warner Bros. Television are all working on the series. Daniel Pipski from 6th & Idaho Production will also serve as an executive producer along with Rafi Crohn as a co-executive producer.
