[Editor’s note: The following contains some spoilers for The Penguin.]

The Big Picture

The HBO series ‘The Penguin,’ taking place after the events of ‘The Batman,’ explores Gotham’s criminal underworld and Oz Cobb’s place in it.
Producer Dylan Clark hints at potential future seasons and further expansion of the Batman world.
The series maintains Batman’s presence as a specter while focusing on emotionally intense character development.

From executive producer Matt Reeves, the eight-episode DC Studios/HBO series The Penguin, which takes place after the events of The Batman and prior to the upcoming sequel, places Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) in the center of Gotham’s criminal underworld. At the same time, Sofia Falcone (Cristin Milioti), mob boss Carmine Falcone’s daughter, is free from Arkham Asylum and wondering what comes next for her in a boys’ club of organized crime that’s not welcoming her with open arms. Unsure of where things stand between her and Oz or whether they can work together, she’ll find out soon enough, as she vies for control of her late father’s empire.

Collider recently got the opportunity to chat one-on-one with Dylan Clark, the producer for both The Batman and The Penguin who has worked with Reeves for 15 years now, about how this TV series came to be, that he could see this world expand into future seasons and/or additional series, keeping the myth of Batman alive in Gotham without directly seeing him in this story, the evolution of Farrell’s makeup and prosthetics, the mother-son dynamic, and digging deep emotionally throughout the season.

Colin Farrell’s Total Transformation for ‘The Batman’ Inspired the Idea of a Gangster TV Series

Collider: Were there conversations from the beginning that this world would be expanded beyond the world of The Batman? It seems like that would be a given, but was that the case?

DYLAN CLARK: There’s a great business opportunity, as creative producers, to be able to have Warner Bros. to do the big Batman movies and explore the Batman and Bruce character, in that point of view, really focused on the things he’s grappling with. And then, of course, HBO is connected to Warner Bros. and this great network and high end cable experience that HBO is, to do potentially these other series. Matt [Reeves] and I joke about this, but one of the first drafts of The Batman was long. Matt storyboards in the scripts, and it was just so detailed and delicious, but it was busting at the seams. And he said, “Do you think they’ll let us do it as an HBO series?” And I went, “Wouldn’t that be cool? That would be so amazing.” It was like, “Maybe we should do that.”

And then, in a meeting with Casey [Bloys] and Sarah [Aubrey], he said, “You know, we could do this.” And the Penguin was just the obvious character to do. Colin [Farrell] was so amazing in our movie. He was only in six scenes. When we tested the movie, he always rated at the top with Rob [Pattinson]. It was like, “God, it’s Colin Farrell and he’s such an amazing actor. The way he transforms himself, not just physically but emotionally, inside this character, wouldn’t it be fun to do a gangster show around this guy?” And then, Casey was like, “I want that.” Matt had to part with some of the ideas that he wanted to explore in movie two. That rise to power Scarface story that is the beginning of this series was the beginning of movie two, once we were gonna get to fleshing that out, but it was the right thing to do, to hand it off to (showrunner) Lauren [LeFranc] to fill out the emotional and psychological complexity journeys that the series is and for us to figure out what we were gonna do differently in the sequel, which has so many great characters that we had some other choices to follow. That’s been fun.

At the same time, you did the first movie, and now you’ve done this season to lead into the sequel. Can you do a second season of this show?

CLARK: There’s absolutely more story inside of Oz and other characters in this world. Matt spoke at Comic-Con about how he’s such a great character that Oz has to be in the sequel, and he will be in some fashion, and it’s gonna be exciting to see Colin back in the movie space. But if we get lucky and we continue to do another season of The Penguin, I think there are ideas. There are also other characters that deserve and want the development and the detailed experience and character journeys that you can only do in long form, and HBO is such a great place to do that. So, we’re in talks with Casey and Sarah on a number of characters from our world that fit into the HBO family.

Related Keeping Colin Farrell in Character As Oz Cobb in ‘The Penguin’ Was More Grueling Than You Think [Exclusive] “It’s a battleground…”

Was it also important to populate the series in a way that wouldn’t make audiences keep wondering where Batman is while all this is going on?

CLARK: We always believe that Batman is a specter in the city. He’s out there somewhere, you just never know. That’s the idea of Batman, from the signal and the fear that people have that he could show up. So, our hope is that the myth of The Batman is there, but the intention was to always be in the point of view of Oz and the characters that he’s connecting with. You really just wanna tell that story fully. Lauren’s pitch was really incredible. She dove so deeply into the complexities of this character, and the other characters, like Cristin [Milioti]’s character, Sofia, and the family betrayal and what she had to endure that made her who she is. You really don’t wanna leave that story. That’s the story that we wanted to tell and finish. I think everybody knows that The Batman is out there. I think that we’ve given them enough exciting, entertaining, dark, scary, and violent things that run the gamut, that they’ll be happy we stayed in that point of view.

‘The Penguin’ Producer Dylan Clark Says That Colin Farrell’s Transformation Into Oz Cobb is Magical
Image via HBO

When you do something like this and you have someone like Colin Farrell, and then you make sure nobody can see Colin Farrell, when do you realize just what he’s delivering in that performance?

CLARK: At some point, I will release the cell phone video that Colin sent to me and Matt, after he put the prosthetics on with Mike [Marino] for the first time. He had never tried out the voice for us. We had seen a bust of the prosthetics. Matt and Mike had talked a lot about the inspirations for the face for Oz, and Colin was involved in all of that as well, but it wasn’t until it was applied that a light switch just went off. He was sitting there with the cell phone camera and he was talking to us in a way that was not Colin Farrell, but that was this guy Oz. And then, he got up and walked around like him and just inhabited the space in a way that was magical. The soulfulness of Colin, to be able to transfer his acting ability into this being, was uncanny. It’s a little bit of an act of a crazy producer because I had to call the head of Warner Bros. at that time and say, “Hey, I know you think you cast Colin Farrell as Oz, but you didn’t. You got this guy, and here you go.” It was incredible. It was met with shock, awe, and excitement. It’s truly just a unique, surprising, amazing, horrible guy.

9:35 Related Colin Farrell Loves Getting Lost in ‘The Penguin’ Prosthetics Prosthetics designer Mike Marino also talks about his ‘Batman’ inspirations and why Farrell has such a great face for makeup.

There’s something so interesting about the mother-son dynamic in this. Do you see this as a mother who loves her son? Is this a mother that’s just manipulating her son? Is it both of those things?

CLARK: I think it’s gotta be both. I think it starts as love, and then I think it evolves into this other thing. Parts of that are relatable, in scary ways. The best part of watching villainy is not seeing villains just act horribly, but it’s about, how do these people that we can relate to become villains? What is that experience like to watch? Watching it, the human parts of it were really well rendered. You relate to some of it, you understand it, you have empathy around it, and then you’re truly like, “I wouldn’t do that. I couldn’t do that. Maybe I could. Could I do that?” [Lauren] posed these questions dramatically in ways that were really surprising, and that’s what great drama is. Nobody wants to just see a bad guy act bad. That’s boring. But how does somebody that’s a mid-level gangster who has ambition and wants to be revered and recognized in the city, go from being a son to a sociopathic gangster killer? What does that transformation look like? And what kind of mother goes along for that ride too?

What have been the biggest surprises and challenges, when it comes to working with such a well-known IP in such a familiar setting?

CLARK: I’ve worked with Matt for 15 years. We did the Apes movies together. I’ve been in the trenches with them. His work ethic is just incredible. He’s so rigorous. What his promise to the audience is, that he’s gonna go all the way to at least make a story that works emotionally for him, they’re gonna feel like they’re in good hands with him. And then, he’s gonna do his research and he’s gonna push the limit, so that it feels like characters that they know, but it’s done in a surprising way. It’s terrifying to do Batman because clearly it’s been done really well, so many times. Chris Nolan did amazing Batmans. Adam West is the Batman we grew up with and we revere. Zack Snyder did Batman. There are incredible Batmen out there. So, you don’t take it lightly, but you have to be ambitious. You’re trying to make the best Batman story that hasn’t been told yet. And so, the idea that we were able to finish this movie in a pandemic, that it was a long movie, and that it’s dramatic and it’s not wall-to-wall action, that it was received as well as it was in that climate, it was humbling and gratifying in ways that I’ll never forget. And then, we were able to work with HBO to take this one character, who’s a known character, and do this exploration in a much more edgy way. That’s the other thing. Our movies are PG-13. This is a very edgy, R-rated space that you can do on HBO. It’s just wildly creatively freeing, but it’s also humbling because you wanna get it right.

Related ‘The Penguin’s Showrunner on What Makes Oz and Sofia So Similar Showrunner Lauren LeFranc and Craig Zobel, who directed episodes 1-3, also talk about making a comic book series without superheroes.

With the movie and the show, you’ve given us deep character studies that you’re disguising and putting out in the world as comic book stories.

CLARK: You want them to be entertaining. The drama and the emotional parts of these things have to land and they have to be relatable, but you also have to then take that character and place them in situations where the rhythms get bigger and the pulse rate gets higher but it’s always about character-driven, emotional stuff. That, inside of action, equals the best form of entertainment.

‘The Penguin’ Goes to Some Deep Psychological and Dark Places With a Dash of Humor
Image via HBO

If you told me that I would have gotten to the end of this season and would have been heartbroken, I would have thought you were crazy.

CLARK: With the movie, we were like, “We’re the team that wants to make you cry in a Batman movie.” I don’t think that was said by previous guys. Maybe Tim Burton. I don’t know. But our partner, amazing showrunner, head writer, and the person who created this whole narrative, Lauren LeFranc, is from that book, as well. Emotionally, she really wanted to visit some interesting psychological places, some of them very dark, some of them very entertaining and funny, and some of them also just great gangster stuff. She wanted to go deep, and she did. That’s really hard to do in a TV series. With the work environment, it’s tough. Our crew is amazing. Those are long hours. It’s really hard to get everything done. Colin has to go through three and a half to four hours of prosthetic makeup, every time he works. We have the most amazing cast. They all signed up and went for it. Everybody was so courageous to just jump into this story and this series and deliver what they delivered. It was really impressive.

It follows the transformation of Oswald Cobblepot from a disfigured nobody to a noted Gotham gangster.Release Date September 19, 2024 Cast Colin Farrell , Cristin Milioti , Rhenzy Feliz , Michael Kelly , Shohreh Aghdashloo , Deirdre O’Connell , Clancy Brown , James Madio , Scott Cohen , Michael Zegen , Carmen Ejogo , Theo Rossi Seasons 1 Showrunner Lauren LeFranc Expand

The Penguin airs on HBO and is available to stream on Max. Check out the trailer:

Watch on Max