“You step outta of line… even once, I’ll gut you like a Goddam fish…”
-Oswald Cobblepot
In 2022, writer-director Matt Reeves unleashed the grittiest, and in our opinion, most accurate portrayal of Gotham’s protector we have seen to date with his incredible film, “The Batman.” EVERYTHING about it worked and by “worked” we mean WORKED PERFECTLY. This film REALLY grabbed our attention from the first frame and for 176 minutes had us riveted to the screen. The tone, the camera angles, the SCORE, the wardrobe, and of course, the cast. One of the integral pieces of that “cast puzzle” was Colin Farrell’s re-imagining of one of Batman’s greatest foes, The Penguin.
Flash forward to 2024 and Matt Reeves is ready to launch the next chapter in The Batman saga and we are having a DIFFICULT time waiting for it! “The Penguin” is the new Max Original Series coming this fall and they have just launched the first teaser trailer for the show that is at the top of our “Must-See TV” list.
Here is what Matt Reeves had to say about Colin in an interview back in 2023. “He is such a genius. He’s such a wonderful, soulful, lovely person and I loved working with him. And I remember it was this thing where when we were doing the movie, he was only in a certain part of that movie, but he just was so amazing. At the beginning, he was like, ‘I don’t want that many scenes.’ And then as we were doing it, he was having such fun, he goes, ‘Can there be more scenes?’ And I was like, ‘Well, let me see what else,’ but we only had so much space within the movie.”
Here’s what Reeves had to say about showrunner/ writer Lauren LeFranc, “The idea of getting to do the series and really sort of dive into the depths of who this character is and look at that moment where it’s kind of his Scarface moment. The moment where everyone’s underestimated him, he’s gonna reach for power in Gotham. Lauren LeFranc, who wrote it and who’s the showrunner, she’s so wonderful. She dug into the character. I kept showing her the movie as she was working on the script, before the movie was ever done.”
Colin spoke to Collider and had this to say about the series, ” I read the first episode, which is just so tasty and so unusual as the character was on the page and what Matt Reeves kind of envisioned when he was thinking of this iteration of the bang up of Oz.”
Although we don’t learn a lot, the teaser emotes has a mobster/ Sopranos vibe and it’s clear that Oswald is ready to take control of Gotham after the flood in The Batman. “The Penguin” stars: Colin Farrell, Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Deirdre O’Connell, Clancy Brown, and Michael Zegen. No firm date has been set BUT… this fall is the general time period to look forward to what looks to be a fantastic continuation from the 2022 film. Give us YOUR thoughts below.
(Alternative “The Penguin” poster art by @jaxsonderr – Instagram)