Colin Farrell Confirms 'The Penguin' Production Start Date: 'I Wanted More' Character With 'The Batman' Spinoff

Colin Farrell is ready to get back into the Penguin game.

After starring as nightclub owner Oswald "Oz" Cobblepot in "The Batman," Farrell is reprising the villainous role for an eponymous HBO Max spin-off series, which is slated to go into production in February.

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"The only thing I had any idea was that I wasn't going to explore the character as much as I wanted to," Farrell said on the red carpet at the London International Film Festival awards gala. Palm Springs. "Because there was all this amazing work done by [makeup artists and prosthetists] Mike Marino and Mike Fontaine and his team, and I just thought that was the tip of the iceberg, pardon the pun, that we were going to do the six or seven scenes that we did in the movie. I was grateful to them, but I wanted more."

"The Batman" producer Dylan Clark serves as executive producer on the series, alongside the film's director Matt Reeves, whom Farrell confirmed last year that he will not be directing the series as he is working hard on the sequel to "The Batman". Farrell is also an executive producer on the series.

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The 'Banshees of Inisherin' star has revealed the detailed prosthetics that made him unrecognizable as the character are what sealed the deal for the spin-off, which he brought Clark.

"Honestly, any thought I had about an extended series was about the work of Mike Marino," Farrell said. “I just knew there was so much to do with it – getting old, getting old. He's just such a genius, Mike, so his work was the inspiration, really."

Antonio Campos will serve as writer and showrunner for the series, which also stars Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone, the daughter of John Turturro's mob boss Carmine Falcone. The production of the series will take five or six months, as Variety reported.

Executive producer Clark previously explained that 'The Penguin' series will show the rise of Oz (Farrell), "almost like a 'Scarface' story," as Clark told Games Radar. "It's exciting to do something like this on its own, but it speaks to the character and our film, so you'll go back to the film [and say], 'Oh, I see that backstory there, this line refers to that,” he added.

Farrell said at the time, "We have to figure out what made him the man he is. And also, it will pick up where that movie left off, I think. I think that will pick up shortly after the last frame of this movie. We'll take a little left turn to the world of Oz and how it begins to dream of filling a potential power void that might exist.

He continued, "He's a charming, charming character who explores vulnerabilities. His violence is apparent, his propensity for violence and his ability to use it as a tool is apparent, but [also] to see that we all have weak points. Every person. And to be able to find that place, digging around it would be fun."

Colin Farrell opens up on the playoffs: "I just thought that was the tip of the iceberg, pardon the pun, whether we were going to do the six or seven scenes from the movie. I was grateful for them, but I wanted more."

— Variety (@Variety)

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