Head of HBO Max Original Content, Sarah Aubrey, recently shared a bit of detail for the upcoming The Batman spinoff, The Penguin series. The series will pick up where Matt Reeves’ The Batman left off. The movie starred Robert Pattison as the Dark Knight and Collin Farrell as Oswald Cobblepot. Aubrey briefly shares the coverage of the story and that the movie has its sequel in development.
Even though the series takes place in Gotham City around the same timeline of The Batman, it isn’t explicitly clear if the series will show Pattinson as well.
HBO Max Head Shares The Batman Spinoff Penguin Series Info
Image: Warner Bros.
Aubrey notes that the upcoming series will focus on Farrell’s character belonging to the Batman’s rogue gallery. Furthermore, the story will focus Oswald Cobblepot’s journey to becoming the Penguin. The HBO Max head stated:
‘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.
Being a bridge for the two Batman movies will mean that to some capacity, Penguin will be a player in the sequel. When one considers the first The Batman movie as Bruce Wayne’s steps to becoming the Caped Crusader, the series can mirror that for The Penguin. In the first movie, Cobblepot is nowhere near the level of a mob boss. By the end of the movie, that position is up for the taking.
It’s possible that Cobblepot takes his chances and shows his own steps to gain his ‘mobdom’ in the 8-episode series. Could it mean that in the next The Batman movie, Batman will be facing Penguin as one of the main villain, if not “the”?
HBO Max Head Shares The Batman Spinoff Penguin Series Info
Image: Warner Bros.
Furthermore, Aubrey said:
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.
Farrell did a wonderful job portraying the role in the movie. It’s why they are having this series in the first place. He surprised critics and audience alike. Many said that they wouldn’t recognize him had they not known it was really Farrell underneath all the make up.
As this Batman universe is separate from the DC Universe that is being rebuilt now, the project is still under James Gunn and Peter Safran. The universe however is what can be called the brainchild of Matt Reeves. It’s possible that more character focus features and series will be in development as this universe expands.
