Colin Farrell's The Penguin to Restart Filming After Thanksgiving

Colin Farrell is heading back to Gotham City. The Penguin, starring the Oscar nominee as ascendant Gotham gangster Oswald "Oz" Cobblepot, will restart production after Thanksgiving, Variety reports. Filming on The Batman spinoff series started in March but paused weeks later amid the Hollywood writers' strike and remained on ice during the SAG-AFTRA actors' strike. With both strikes over and writers and actors back to work, Penguin will resume production before the end of November. The DC series is now scheduled to premiere in fall 2024 after being pushed off its spring release date.

An unrecognizable Farrell, whose transformation into the iconic Batman villain earned the film an Oscar nomination for best achievement in makeup, reprises his role for the series and serves as executive producer. Lauren LeFranc (Hemlock Grove, Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) is the writer, creator, and executive producer on the series that counts The Batman director Matt Reeves and producer Dylan Clark as EPs. The eight-episode DC Studios drama is set after the events of The Batman and bridges the Batman reboot with the sequel movie currently dated for October 3, 2025.

The cast includes Cristin Milioti (The Sopranos) as Cobblepot's chief gang war rival, Sofia Falcone; Michael Zegen (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) as Alberto Falcone; Clancy Brown (Dexter: New Blood) as Gotham City crime boss Salvatore Maroni; and Rhenzy Feliz (Runaways), Michael Kelly (Man of Steel), Shohreh Aghdashloo (The Expanse), Deirdre O'Connell (Daredevil), and John Cenatiempo (Joker) in undisclosed roles.

"The Penguin show is dark, but I've just got such license to explore in it, and such a freedom beneath the makeup," Farrell previously told Gold Derby. "There's some kind of permission you're given to explore in a way that's hard to give yourself when it's just your visage, you know? So I'm super excited about it."

The first TV series set in Reeves' Bat-Verse expanding the world of The Batman is "f-ing great stuff," Farrell said, adding that the Penguin make-up "is somehow, in a very subtle way, even better. It's just more perfected."

DC's The Penguin is expected to premiere late 2024 on Max.