One of the few scenes involving the Penguin in Matt Reeves’ 2022 superhero crime thriller “The Batman” ended up on the cutting-room floor.
After a brief exchange with Selina Kyle at his nightclub, Oz Cobb, also known as the Penguin, can’t help but lash out that his attempts at kindness were rejected.
“I know you don’t see it yet. … Nobody does,” says Oz, portrayed by Colin Farrell, to Selina (Zoë Kravitz). “But one day, this city is going to be mine.”
Upcoming HBO series “The Penguin,” premiering Sept. 19, follows the midlevel gangster as he works to make good on that promise. Set one week after the events of “The Batman,” the drama will see Oz try to fill the power vacuum that has been left in the criminal underbelly of Gotham. The show, originally designated a Max Original, was rebranded under the HBO banner as befits its prestige bona fides.
The eight-episode series sees an unrecognizable Farrell reprise his role and introduces other players in Oz’s orbit, such as Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, the daughter of the former Gotham kingpin Carmine Falcone, who is looking to avenge her father and take over the family business, as well as Rhenzy Feliz as Victor Aguilar, a teen whom Oz takes under his wing as his hired driver.
Showrunner Lauren LeFranc describes the series as “a character study on Oz” that will “get into his head psychologically … dig[ging] deeper into who he is, into his past, into what he wants [and] what he fears.”
“Oz is very smart and he’s very calculated,” says LeFranc during a recent video call. “He’s also impulsive and a bit problematic and has a lot of rage built up inside of him. I also think he’s charming and has a dark sense of humor. … In the current climate of our world that we’re in right now, I think there are many men like Oz, and that helps make him worth exploring.”
A well-known member of the Batman rogues gallery, the Penguin, created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger, first appeared in the pages of “Detective Comics” No. 58 (1941). Also known as Oswald Cobblepot, he is generally depicted as a ruthless crime boss with an affinity for top hats and umbrellas (and birds). He is often drawn to physically resemble a penguin, dressed in a formal suit with a long birdlike nose, shuffling with a bit of a waddle.
Comic book writer Tom King, who is also working on HBO’s DC comics-based “Lanterns” series, describes the Penguin as “iconic.”
“The Penguin is one of those characters — and they are few and far between — that lives in the subconsciousness of not only America but the world,” says King, whose bibliography includes more than 100 issues of “Batman” as well as a 12-issue “Penguin” series. “Everyone has an opinion on what the Penguin is and what he should be doing.”
In addition to over 80 years’ worth of comic book appearances, a number of Penguins have appeared onscreen. Burgess Meredith played the character in the 1960s “Batman” series, which starred Adam West as a campier iteration of the Caped Crusader. Danny DeVito portrayed a more fantastical take on Cobblepot, who was raised by penguins after being rejected by his parents, in “Batman Returns” (1992). More recently, the TV series “Gotham,” which aired from 2014 to 2019, featured a more up-and-coming version of the Penguin played by Robin Lord Taylor. There are also numerous variations of the Penguin in video games and animation.
Farrell says Meredith’s portrayal in the 1960s “Batman” series, which he grew up watching, was his introduction to the character.
“Like all else in ‘Batman’ ’66, Burgess was funny and devilishly arch too,” wrote Farrell in an email. “But playful, as that world of caper was. Danny was, well, as much Penguin as he was man. Psychotic and broken and dangerous to get too close to. Our Penguin would certainly [hew] closer to Danny’s.
“Every iteration of the Penguin character is dangerous,” he continued. “Each one is cerebral and a master of manipulation. Each one also seems dogged down by paranoia and a desire to be taken seriously and not made a mockery of. The biggest difference in all our efforts is the behavior that the film or television show calls for.”
Filmmaker Matt Reeves, an executive producer on “The Penguin,” says his aim with “The Batman” was to introduce a version of Gotham that was grounded and for “it to be like [a city that exists] in our world.”
With a grounded world comes grounded villains. After a deep dive into Batman’s rogues gallery and noticing how many of them existed in reaction to Batman, Reeves considered a version of the Penguin who had yet to reach the status of a feared crime boss.
“I wanted to do something where he was someone who had been underestimated … somebody who was made fun of and overlooked,” says Reeves, describing Oz’s journey as a “Scarface”-like ascent. “I wanted this sort of dark American dream. What success looks like for somebody in Gotham would come from a void at their center.”
“We’re custodians and guardians of the IP,” says Dylan Clark, Reeves’ producing partner and an executive producer on “The Penguin.” “We’re interested in the contemporary parts of the characters … but there are aspects of the history of the Penguin in the comic book canon that I think fans will see and like.”
Seeing this more grounded mobster version of Oz created by Reeves and Farrell (as well as prosthetics designer Mike Marino) helped LeFranc feel that this “was an opportunity to do something different.”
“Every previous depiction [of the Penguin] that I was familiar with felt less grounded and was fantastical and interesting and fun and amazing in its own way,” LeFranc says. “I think there’s room for so many different types of a character. That’s the beauty of DC having a canon like this. You can evolve and it should evolve. … It’s about honoring what came before and knowing that we’re in modern times now.”
For LeFranc, this meant moving away from past problematic tropes in comics, like villains being depicted with visible scars or disabilities to project a sense of otherness, and populating the world of “The Penguin” with more complicated female characters than have traditionally been featured in gangster shows.
“Oz respects women in the show,” says LeFranc. “To a certain extent, he discounts everybody. He’s a wily guy. But he respects someone like Sofia Falcone. To me, that’s rooted in his love for his mother and his desire to have her be proud of him. He respects his mother, and he respects Sofia. … That was essential for me to depict in a character like him.”
While there have been previous incarnations of Oswald Cobblepot who hailed from a wealthy family, the Oz Cobb of “The Penguin” does not. And among the themes the series will touch on, according to LeFranc, are those around trauma, class and wealth disparity.
“The Penguin” arrives on TV just as King’s “The Penguin” comic wraps its run, but it shows how even after 80 years of storytelling, there are still ways to stretch and reinterpret the iconic villain.
King’s series with Rafael de Latorre also takes a more grounded approach to the character. But unlike the HBO series, which is about the Penguin’s rise to power, the latest “Penguin” comic book story starts with a version of the character who is trying to retire from the criminal lifestyle.
For King, the book was an opportunity to explore “a contradiction” of the character’s established lore that the writer loves.
“Batman’s obvious obsession is crime,” King says. “He wages a war on crime because of how his parents died, [but] the fact that Penguin as a criminal thrives in Gotham City makes zero sense. Because Batman should shut that down. He’s just a guy with an umbrella.”
Reeves believes the possibilities for these many interpretations is part of why comics and comic book adaptations can continue to appeal to audiences.
“The thing about comics is any time that somebody revisits these characters, there has to be a reinvention, so there are countless iterations of the characters,” Reeves says. The audience “want certain things that they expect, but they also want to see what’s different and how this is going to engage them in a way that’s new.”
