Colin Farrell has stated that his Penguin spin-off series will be eight episodes long. On a podcast with Variety, the Oscar-nominated actor dropped key details about the BatVerse series, revealing that the timeline is set about a week after the end of Matt Reeves’ The Batman movie. Filming will begin soon with Mare of Easttown’s Craig Zobel attached to direct. The news comes in the wake of DC Studios announcing the release date for The Batman: Part II, scheduled to release on October 3, 2025. It is also worth noting that The Penguin series has been billed as an HBO Max production, so it might not drop on Disney+ Hotstar — as seen with Peacemaker, which was released on Amazon Prime Video, seven months after the original US airing.
“It’s going to be an eight-part thing around Oz’s rise to power, filling that power vacuum created when Falcone was killed. Matt’s idea was to have the Penguin show begin about a week after the end of The Batman film,” Farrell told Variety. “And if it works, if the trajectory is interesting, and the audience goes for it, and we do our jobs right, the second Penguin feature will pick up where the HBO show will end.” Farrell’s comments echo Reeves’ comments from last month, which claimed that the series will be ‘tightly connected‘ to the movies’ arc, eventually leading into The Batman sequel. In an interview from last year, the actor confirmed that the series will be six to eight hours long — typical fashion for an HBO show.
Farrell will reprise his role as the crime boss Oswald Cobblepot, with the series charting his rise to the top following Carmine Falcone’s (John Turturro) death in The Batman. Meanwhile, Cristin Milioti (Palm Springs) is attached to play the latter’s daughter Sophia Falcone, first introduced in the acclaimed noir graphic novel, Batman: The Long Halloween. Since the show is set just a week after the events of the film, Gotham City is still somewhat underwater. “I read the first script of the first episode and it opens up on my feet splashing through the water in Falcone’s office. Even that alone, when I read it, I was like, ‘Oh, Jesus!”, Farrell told Variety last year.
Reeves, who will executive-produce The Penguin series, is also looking to expand his grounded universe by further exploring the Dark Knight’s Rogues Gallery. Previous reports suggested that the director was looking to tell spin-off stories of characters such as Scarecrow, Clayface, and Professor Pyg. Meanwhile, The Batman: Part II will continue to focus on Robert Pattinson’s Bruce Wayne, unlike other iterations where the villains take centrestage in the follow-ups. Reeves also has an Arkham series in the works. The show was initially planned to be set within the GCPD (Gotham City Police Department) but switched gears to focus on the remote island-set asylum, Reeves revealed last year.
Earlier this week, DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn revealed a part of his 8–10 year plan for the new DC Universe, where he confirmed that Reeves’ The Batman universe will run separately from the mainline arc and that it will be strictly labelled as ‘DC Elseworlds‘. The same rule applies to Todd Phillips’ Joker sequel and Teen Titans GO! Additionally, the DCU will introduce a new Batman, alongside his biological son Damian Wayne as Robin. The film is called The Brave and the Bold, and is based on writer Grant Morrison’s comic book run that sees Bruce assuming parenting duties.
Currently, there is no release window for HBO Max’s The Penguin.
