Matt Reeves’s The Batman isn’t out yet, but the DCEU spin-offs are already coming together. Colin Farrell is set to reprise his role as The Penguin from the action movie, in a TV series for streaming service HBO Max.
The notion first made the rounds in September, but Farrell wasn’t formally attached at that point. Now, Variety reports that the actor has officially signed on to play Oswald Cobblepot for the production. Details are scant, but it’s believed this’ll be an origin story of sorts, on the Penguin’s unscrupulous rise through the ranks of Gotham’s criminal underbelly. Lauren LeFranc, producer on Marvel Cinematic Universe show Agents of SHIELD and showrunner on sci-fi series Impulse, is writing the scripts.
This is the second spin-off based on The Batman, after Gotham PD, on which Joe Barton became showrunner in January of this year. As the name implies, it’ll go into Gotham City’s struggles with lax police enforcement, similar to the five seasons of wholly unrelated (but still based on the same characters and setting). Gotham. Nobody is attached to star in that project as yet.
An eclectic actor, Farrell is known for being in comedy movies like In Bruges, fantasy movies such as The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, and many more besides. This will be only his fourth starring role on television, after True Detective season 2, this year’s The North Water, and starting his career off with a slew of episodes on Ballykissangel in the ’80s.
We’ve gotten a couple of trailers now for The Batman, and a deleted synopsis that described Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne as “disillusioned”. Paul Dano, Jeffrey Wright, Zoe Kravitz, and Andy Serkis feature in the film besides Pattinson and Farrell, with a script by Reeves and Peter Craig.
The Batman arrives in theatres March 4, 2022, and we’ll keep you informed on The Penguin and Gotham PD spin-offs. In the meantime, read up on other DC cinematic productions The Flash, Aquaman 2, and Black Adam.