Collin Farrell’s highly anticipated The Penguin is close to its release. The highly anticipated show for HBO and Max will be an extension of the Batman Epic Crime Saga that started with Robert Pattinson’s The Batman released in 2022. Now, the second installment of the movie has been a green light and will be a huge addition to DC from Elsewhere narrative. Now, The Batman shared Collin Farrell’s Penguin will appear in his DC sequel but he will avoid one supervillain for a valid reason.
Matt Reeves Confirms Colin Farrell’s Penguin in The Batman 2
Collin Farrell and Robert Pattinson. Image: DC/Warner Brothers.
Colin Farrell made his debut in Matt Reeves’ Batman Epic Crime Saga in the first installment of The Batman. Farrell’s Oswald Cobblepot, a.k.a. the Penguin is getting his solo series which will give viewers the picture of the deep underground crime empire in Gotham City and the quest for power and the supreme throne. Reeves SFX magazine for its October 2024 issue to share some intricate details of The Batman 2. The director revealed that Farrell will return as the Penguin after the end of the first season of his show while sharing an update on the production of the hyped movie. “The plan is to shoot next year, and we’re finishing up the script now,” Reeves told the outlet (via Deadline).
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“Colin [Farrell] will be part of the movie. We’ve shared [the script] as we’ve been going along with DC and the studio and they’re super excited,” the director said. Obviously, The Penguin will be connected to the upcoming Batman movie similar to how the first installment connects the show. Penguin as the titular Gotham villain will be an “entry point” to the upcoming movie. It’s “absolutely connected to where we leave things in the series,” Reeves added.
“There are details that actually connect right into the way the next movie begins, and the way that Oz enters that world as we hand the baton back to Batman, and Batman is on another case,”
The Penguin will follow the events of The Batman centering on Farrell’s character and his rise in the crime empire.
The Batman 2 Will Not Add Highly Anticipated Supervillain, Gentleman Ghost
Gentleman Ghost. Image Credit: DC Comics
Reeves’ Batman Epic Crime Saga got traction right after the first film defied all odds and criticism surrounding its lead star Robert Pattinson. The movie went on to be a stunning hit earning $772 million worldwide. In the second movie, the director explained to the magazine that he wants “these stories to be a meditation on the way Gotham is the way it is.” Gotham City is such “a brutal place and we’re digging for the answers as to why these people’s lives are this way.”
Further, the sequel is “going to dig into the epic story about deeper corruption, and it goes into places that he couldn’t anticipate in the first one. The seeds of where this goes are all in the first movie, and it expands in a way that will show you aspects of the character you never got to see. Batman is constantly battling these forces. But those forces can’t be entirely exorcised. So the next movie delves deeper into that”
With that note, fans were all hyped up about the debut of supervillain Gentleman Ghost in BECS but the director has dismissed the idea stating a valid reason.
“What was important to me was to find a way to take these pop icons, these mythical characters that everybody knows, and translate it so that Gotham feels like a place in our world. We might push to the edge of the fantastical but we would never go into full fantastical. It’s meant to feel quite grounded.”
“It doesn’t mean that you won’t see characters that people love,” Reeves continued stating that that’s exactly “what we want to do.” However, for the filmmaker, Gentleman Ghost is “probably pushed a bit too far for us to be able to find a way to do, but there is a fun way to think about how we would take characters that might push over into a bit of the fantastical and find a way to make sense of that.”
Although Gentleman Ghost’s appearance in Reeves’ universe is not happening, fans will be able to see the character in Bruce Timm’s Batman: Caped Crusader animated series.
The Penguin debuts HBO/Max on September 19.
