An HBO Max executive is taking on the question of The Batman Universe that Matt Reeves is building – including HBO Max’s upcoming Penguin TV series, starring Colin Farrell. HBO Max head of originals Sarah Aubrey was talking to Variety about the future of the streaming service – especially now that Warner Bros. has become Warner Bros. Discovery. After a turbulent summer of creative changes, Warner Bros. indicated that The Batman franchise is continuing on as planned – and now we know exactly how and where The Penguin series fits in.
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Where Does The Penguin HBO Max Series Fit Into The Batman Timeline?
“‘Penguin’ will sit immediately after the end of ‘The Batman’ and temporally before the events of the second movie,” Aubrey confirmed. “The show will come out in between the two movies. Now beyond that, it’s fun for the audience to know that it will be a bridge between the two, but the actual release date, I’m not at liberty to say.”
That is pretty much what fans and industry analysts predicted. While no official synopsis has been released, Reeves, Farrell, and others haven’t been withholding in letting fans know the premise of the series. It was always said it would be set right after The Batman (and before The Batman 2) and follow “Oz” Cobblepot stepping into the organized crime void left by his boss Carmine Falcone – not to mention the total collapse of Gotham in Riddler’s attack. Sarah Aubrey confirms as much while giving us the best synopsis yet for the show:
What Is The Penguin HBO Max Series About?
“The goal of this is to show what Oz’s life is like and that’s very much in the streets of Gotham, trying to get up and over as only the Penguin can,” Aubrey explained. “As a hustler and a strategist with his own ambitions. It is a great example of having the time over eight episodes to tell a longer-arc character story with a lot of delicious twists and turns and new characters. It’s very much going to be about Gotham at that street level, because he’s not flying around like Batman does. We are all embracing that as a very specific experience for audiences to have.”
From the sound of that, it seems like WB, DC, and HBO Max are about to make a real crime-drama series that just so happens to be set in the DC Universe. With HBO Max as a platform, it could even be as violent and adult as any live-action Batman content we’ve ever seen. We’d be in – how about you?
Best of all: it sounds like the creation of The Penguin character fans know and love from the comics – even if it also sounds a lot like what Gotham did before this.
Craig Zobel is in talks to direct episodes of The Penguin; Lauren LeFranc will act as showrunner. Zobel is best known for his work on HBO’s Emmy Award-Winning series Mare of Easttown. Cristin Milioti (The Resort) has been cast as Carmine’s daughter Sofia Falcone, who will be battling Penguin for control of Gotham’s underworld.
The Batman’s Penguin TV Series is in development for HBO Max.
