Clancy Brown to play Gotham’s biggest gangster in The Penguin
Veteran character actor Brown will play Salvatore Maroni in the upcoming The Batman spin-off
Aux News Penguin
Matt Reeves and Colin Farrell’s upcoming HBO Max show The Penguin is drawing in some serious talent for its return to the crime-caked streets of Gotham City, as Deadline reports that veteran TV and film actor Clancy Brown is joining the cast of the series. Brown—who previously worked with HBO in a starring role on Carnivale, but who has been in, roughly, everything—will play the role of Gotham crime boss Salvatore Maroni.
Which does suggest a few things about what direction The Penguin might take, since, by the time The Batman rolls around, Maroni has been out of the picture in the criminal underworld for some time. (He’s the guy whose bust by the ever-faithful Gotham City Police Department sets up a big chunk of the status quo that Paul Dano’s Riddler spends the entire movie trying to literally blow up.) We don’t get many details about Maroni in the movie proper, but we can now say—with some confidence—that he at least has a deep bass voice and a presence likely to scare the shit out of anyone he’s in a room with. (Both Brown trademarks.) The big question is whether he’ll appear in flashbacks, or whether the events of The Batman set up his potential return to the world of organized comics crime.
This isn’t Brown’s first brush with DC Comics criminal royalty, either; a veteran voice actor, he spent years voicing a definitive Lex Luthor in the DC Animated Universe shows. Here, he’s joining a cast that also includes Farrell, plus fellow new additions Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo and Deirdre O’Connell.
So far, there’s no word on when The Penguin will arrive on HBO Max; best guesses currently set the series at an early 2024 debut.
10 Comments
This seems like a good place to mention that, in addition to his years voicing the DCAU’s Lex Luthor, Clancy Brown has also given voice to another memorable animated capitalist: Eugene Krabs. As hinted at by the header photo to this article, actually.
Did you just came down the mountain and found out about this?Beside The Kurgan more in line with a mob boss rather than money loving fast food owner. Unless he’s playing the Condiment King too.
“Hello, pretty.”I would be very excited if he worked some Kurgan into this.
I would love a movie where he and Ron Perlman sit across from each other while a mob war goes on around them and just have a stare-off.
No, better—the mob war happens in the background as they just read Mickey Spillane to each other for two hours!
“I have something to say. It’s better to burn out, than fade away.”
Who will have the more convincing Italian accent: Brown or Pratt?
Clancy Brown is great, but… I didn’t think Eric Robert’s was right for Maroni either, and even Tom Wilkinson as Falcone was pushing it. He can get away with an ‘Irish Mob’ slant on Carmine, I guess, but these characters are very Italian-Mafia inspired, so it’s strange to me they keep doing this. Nolan’s movies set a weird precedent, but Falcone and Maroni are “Five Families/Old Country” stuff that I keep waiting to see proprely. The show Gotham did a better job, but I’d say they only got it half right. If this Penguin series is set in the same universe as Matt Reeves’ Batman, it will be disappointing to see them not show this attention to detail, when they got off to such a good start with the casting of John Turturro. (Though admittedly, I think Turturro would have made a better Sal Maroni than a Carmine Falcone. That really requires a Don Corleone type, and I’m getting lost in the weeds now, aren’t I?
I can only recall a couple of roles where Brown played a good guy. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great actor and he was great as a good guy those few times he’s played one. However, he’s built a career with his ability to reliably play the heavy.