HBO Max reportedly developing another The Batman spin-off, this time with The Penguin
Colin Farrell is playing him in the movie, but there's no word on if he'll appear in the show as well
TV News The Batman
Matt Reeves’ The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson as the Batman, still isn’t out yet and won’t be out until March, but HBO Max is already developing a spin-off series about its rebooted version of the Gotham City Police Department (which is going to be led by Jeffrey Wright’s Jim Gordon in the movie). Actually, scratch that: HBO Max is now developing two spin-offs of The Batman, with one being about the Gotham police and now a second one that’s going to be about the rise of Oswald Cobblepot, a.k.a. The Penguin. Colin Farrell is playing the Penguin in The Batman, having transitioned to the Danny DeVito phase of his career as a handsome Hollywood man, but Variety says there’s “no deal” in place as of yet to have him reprise the role for this TV show. That seems like the sort of thing you would normally figure out first, since a Penguin show with the guy who plays the Penguin is a different prospect than a Penguin show with some other guy, but HBO Max hasn’t officially announced or confirmed this, so we’ll give Warner Bros. some slack this time.
Either way, we can’t help but point out that, just like with the last The Batman spin-off, this sounds oddly similar to Fox’s Gotham. That series was about the Gotham City Police Department and prominently featured the rise of the Penguin, as played by Robin Lord Taylor, which are the two basic premises of these two shows. Then again, there are only so many disparate stories you can tell within the established Batman framework, and The Batman does seem to be doing its own thing—tonally, aesthetically, whatever—from what Gotham did, so maybe these shows will all end up being completely different from each other.
As for the Penguin, he’s a successful Gotham City business owner who likes to dress nice and has a big nose, causing some people to compare him to a penguin. For no particular reason, he is regularly assaulted by a man who dresses up like a bat and has a similar jawline to billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne.
32 Comments
I’m just going to complain about how much better fitted Batman would be on HBO/HBOMax as a limited series every year to 16 months than as movies every 3-4 years.Use the major storylines as arcs for each season. We can see detective work, we can see nice set pieces. They can use characters they’d never feature in a film. we could get the actual Bat Family invovled and a gradual aging of Bruce and casting an older Bruce if they want to do time jumps every once and awhile so you can do multiple Robins and stuff like that.
They’re actually doing that with TITANS, now on HBO Max. [SPOILERS] Bruce has aged out as Batman and Dick, Jason, Tim, and Babs have all been introduced in some fashion. But as the article points out, they could tell the story again I suppose. But otherwise I agree – short 10-13 episode season shows like Daredevil and Doom Patrol are able to flesh out a compelling story, develop characters, and utilize a budget that doesn’t need a bottle episode to pay for the climax. Places it in the sweet spot between a 140 minute movie that checks all the action boxes, and 23-episode seasons that stretch stories (and budgets) so thin they become a slog to get through.
Titans is a good show IMO but it’s rather harsh with Bruce. Not going to satisfy someone who is looking for a traditional portrayal of Batman.
I’m enjoying Titans, too, I think it gets a bad wrap. Season 2 had some issues with the whole Dick in prison and rushing the Slade finale (season 1 finale was mishandled too, I suppose). We’ve seen 3 pretty great Slade Wilsons over the past decade and Esai managed to be the best of them. Also, I never thought I’d see a Hawk & Dove costume that looked good but they pulled it off.Glen doesn’t make a great Bruce but I get that if you’re focusing on Robins that are broken and need to shelve Batman, there’s going to be some fallout. It’s not like Batman doesn’t get the spotlight often enough.
Really enjoying Kartheiser’s casual-Fridays Scarecrow this season – he’s a professor, of course he wears a giant button up cardigan.
Kartheiser is great!* Too bad he’s getting blowback for being obnoxious on set. He went “method” apparently. From out here in the sticks, it looks like WB encourages bad behavior then mumbles ruefully about getting caught. “Fine! We’ll investigate or something. Mrrp mrr grump (long nasal snort).”* Spoiler* except for last episode when his big plot was foiled fairly easily and he basically had to go “No no no! My big plot has been ruined by those cursed Titans!” Which on-the-other-hand IS a kinda classic thing to say if you get a gig playing a Batman villain. So, I’ll blame the plotting on that one (which, tbh, has been pretty good so far this season).
Personally still like Manu the best – his relationship with Oliver that was developed from S1 on really made him a better villain. Esai’s version is more faithful to comics though. Conner is the real standout casting to me – he is perfectly portrayed.I do like Scarecrow and Red Hood this season. Also think they nailed the casting for Barbara as well.
Manu was great, Arrow season 2 is still the gold standard that the CW can’t seem to replicate (not counting Legends since that has become its own bananas thing).
…….but Titans sucks.
One hundred percent.
Hell, basically all you have to do is take the idea of the Animated Series, age it up *a little* and it’d be perfect.
I just don’t get the decades-long resistance to giving the people what they want, and doing a prestige television Batman series with nice production values and serialized storylines. Audiences want to see a fully realized live-action Batman doing his week-to-week work, rather than only foiling plots to blow up all of Gotham. Audiences don’t want to watch a series about Alfred’s backstory, or about the fictional corrupt police department, or a prequel series where Batman can only ever appear in the last ten seconds of the series finale.Stop getting cute and just make a series called Batman, where Bruce Wayne is an adult in the first episode and puts on the Batsuit and fights some crime.
Thank you. It makes this quote: “Then again, there are only so many disparate stories you can tell within the established Batman framework,”- so frustrating because this is only an issue with our parade of Batman-less shows.
a batman show with batman certainly sounds better than 2 batman shows without batman.
I’m guessing that part of it is the DVD/download sales. Movies are usually cheaper than a series run and so much $$ is made in the years after the original release. But I agree. Give us a short-run series and we’d be so happy!
Soooo does this mean we should look forward (in another 2-3 years) to an animated “Into the BatVerse” movie that winds up being better than the last several attempts of live action?
LEGO Batman already happened, as it turns out.
I’d be down for that, except this time all the Brucey Batties bat battle to be top Bats.
sigh
WB: Okay, the MCU method isn’t consistently working for us. Time to pull a Sony and announce a bunch of spinoffs before anyone even knows if the film they’re based on is any good. Luckily we don’t have to worry about continuity this time since we gave up on that when we learned we could make an indie film about how society treats mental illness become a comic book movie just by adding greasepaint and changing all instances of “New York” into “Gotham”.
Can we just have Batman Beyond instead. I don’t get how Batman Beyond has not gotten any new TV shows or movies since the DCAU.
I don’t know why WB/DC has to keep re-learning that they’re not one-trillionth as capable as Feige and Marvel are, but apparently they do. When this show bombs like the Peacemaker one seems destined to, I fully expect WB/DC not to learn a single thing from it.
Colin Farrell is caked under all those prosthetics… From a practical standpoint, are there any other shows where the main actor sits through that many hours of makeup for a series-long run?
Yes, Ron Pearlman in Beauty and the Beast.
Ah!
I wish DC would stop making a billion Batman spin offs and do something with some of their lesser known characters. A Deadman movie. A Creeper tv show. The New Gods on Netflix. something. They need a Kevin Feige type.
“Dear Mr Warner Brothers , there are too many Batman related shows nowadays , please eliminate five . I am not a crackpot.”
Names they are considering for the show: ‘Flightless’, ‘Krill-List’ or ‘The Last Emperor’.
Yeah, no thanks. I’ve already watched Gotham, I don’t need to see a reboot split into two separate shows. And for all its batshit insanity, Penguin was a genuine bright spot in that show (most of the time).
Batshit insanity was kind of the point of Fox Gotham. Once I accepted that, I (mostly) enjoyed the ride.
I have to wait till March to see the Batmobile which is half ‘69 Charger in this iteration…that sucks.
Gotham wasn’t good as one show. I can’t see it being better as two shows.
Networks need to stop dickering around and finally make another live-action Batman show that actually stars Batman.