Last year, Robert Pattinson played the Caped Crusader in The Batman, giving us our most emo onscreen Bruce Wayne yet. The movie was a commercial success, and Matt Reeves’ gritty Batman universe is branching out with spinoffs and sequels. For instance, one upcoming project will follow notorious Gotham city mobster the Penguin, played by Colin Farrell in the movie.
According to a report from Variety, the Penguin spinoff will begin filming in February. It was the first HBO Max spinoff show to be announced. Another will focus on Arkham Asylum.
According to Farrell, there was never any guarantee that he’d get to return as the Penguin. But he knew he wanted to do more:
"The only thing I had an idea [of] was that I wasn’t nearly getting to explore the character as much as I wanted to. Because there was all this extraordinary work done by [makeup artists] Mike Marino and Mike Fontaine and his team, and I just thought it was the tip of the iceberg, pardon the pun, that we were getting to do the six or seven scenes that we did in the film. I was grateful for them, but I wanted more."
The makeup department did an insanely good job; the movie was nominated for a Saturn Award for makeup. Farrell looks unrecognizable as the Penguin:
Colin Farrell excited to get back into The Penguin makeup from The Batman
The talent of the crew is really what has Farrell excited to get back to work. “Honest to god, any thought I had about an extended series was to do with Mike Marino’s work,” he said. “I just knew there was so much to do with it — age it up, age it down. He’s just such a genius, Mike, so it was his work that was the inspiration, really.”
The Penguin series begins production in February and will film for five or six months. Expect it to hit the small screen sometime in 2024.
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