The Penguin may not be the only Batman spinoff we get to see.
The early success of The Penguin may lead to even more spinoffs in The Batman Universe. Last week saw the release of The Penguin, with Colin Farrell reprising his role as Oz Cobb from 2022’s The Batman. There’s already a sequel to The Batman in development, but something that should be interesting to fans of the Dark Knight is how Warner Bros. appears to be expanding that universe on the big and small screen. The Penguin has appearances and nods to various Batman villains from the comics, and according to one of the show’s producers, any one of them has the potential to take the lead on another project down the line.
ComicBook spoke to The Penguin executive producer Dylan Clark ahead of the show’s premiere. We asked if there were any restrictions when it came to characters appearing on the streaming screen compared to the big screen, and Clark’s response is good news for the future of The Batman Universe.
“You know, it comes out of the movie space, Batman’s point of view, Bruce’s point of view,” Clark said. “And when he puts on his suit for the first time, he creates a shockwave through the city. The Riddler decides to become the Riddler. During that moment, the Penguin starts to figure out who he is because of the Batman. Selina Kyle in our movie is just Selina Kyle. We know she’s going to become the Catwoman at some point. So once we figured out that, we really want to just focus on Batman and the movie space. The streaming cable space was was a no brainer for some of the bigger characters. Casey [Bloys, HBO CEO] was the first person that said, I need a marquee character.”
Clark then revealed how there are already ideas to base more spinoffs on the characters from The Batman aside from Penguin. “And Matt [Reeves] said, ‘Hey, I have this really good idea for Colin for the second movie.’ And Casey said, ‘I want that.’ You can’t just have have these characters be in the movie space. So it was a natural transition that way, and I think we have some great ideas to explore more characters from our movie space to do this same thing with Casey and Sarah [Aubrey, Max original programming chief].”
What is The Penguin about?
Starring Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb (aka “The Penguin”), the DC Studios series continues filmmaker Matt Reeves’ The Batman epic crime saga that began with Warner Bros. Pictures’ global blockbuster The Batman. Developed by showrunner Lauren LeFranc, the series centers on the character played by Farrell in the film.
The series stars Colin Farrell (Oz Cobb), Cristin Milioti (Sofia Falcone), Rhenzy Feliz (Victor Aguilar), Michael Kelly (Johnny Viti), Shohreh Aghdashloo (Nadia Maroni), Deirdre O’Connell (Francis Cobb), Clancy Brown (Salvatore Maroni), James Madio (Milos Grapa), Scott Cohen (Luca Falcone), Michael Zegen (Alberto Falcone), Carmen Ejogo (Eve Karlo), and Theo Rossi (Dr. Julian Rush).
The Penguin premiered Thursday, September 19th at 9 p.m. ET/PT, with subsequent new episodes of the eight-episode series on HBO and Max airing on Sundays.
