The Penguin HBO Max series will lead into The Batman sequel

With The Batman standing as easily the biggest DC film of past few years, it’s no surprise that its forthcoming sequels and spinoffs are one of the few parts of DC Studios that remain seemingly unaffected by the transition to the new regime under James Gunn and Peter Safran.

Shortly after the The Batman hit theaters, Warner Bros. penned a new first look deal with director Matt Reeves to expand this new “BatVerse.” The first big project is an HBO Max spinoff series focusing on Colin Farrell’s Penguin, one of the most iconic villains in Batman’s rogues gallery. And despite all the shake-ups at the studio, it appears things are moving along nicely. “We are very, very soon going to start shooting The Penguin with Colin. That is super exciting,” Matt Reeves told Collider.

The Batman introduced Oswald Cobblepot, aka the Penguin, as a mid-level mobster working under crime boss Carmine Falcone (John Turturro). When last we saw the Penguin in the movie, he was staring out over a half-submerged Gotham, pondering how to fill the power vacuum left in the wake of Falcone’s death.

The Penguin spinoff show will tie directly into The Batman 2

Details about the spinoff have been few and far between, but with it set to begin filming soon, Reeves is finally starting to pull back the curtain. He revealed that The Penguin series will “lead into” the sequel for The Batman.

“There’s actually a whole little fabric of things we’re wanting to do, the way we’re doing with [the] Penguin and how that comes back into how that will lead into the sequel, and what that sequel is going to be,” Reeves said. “There are some other things we have planned too. […] The BatVerse of what we’re doing has me very, very excited, and I’m very passionate about it. So I’m excited.”

One of the “other things” Reeves is referring to is another HBO Max spinoff series about Arkham Asylum. Details about that one are even sparser.

As for Farrell, he also sounds pretty psyched about the project. “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,” he said. “So yeah, it’ll be, I think six or eight hours,”

There’s no release date yet for The Penguin spinoff, which means that until we learn more, we’ll just be rewatching The Batman again.

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