The Penguin Star Colin Farrell On The 'Violence And Abject Darkness' Of The Series

Actor Colin Farrell, who plays the lead in Max’s upcoming show The Penguin, recently opened up about how violent and dark the show gets throughout its eight episodes. The Penguin is a crime drama series based on the DC Comic supervillain of the same name. It is created by television producer Lauren LeFranc.

The series is a spin-off of the 2022 film The Batman. It explores the rise of Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot also known as the Penguin in Gotham City’s criminal underworld. The Penguin is expected to release on Max in late 2024. While speaking to HeyUGuys, Farrell said that the show has “tons of violence” and “abject darkness”. He added, “Lauren LeFranc with her room of writers wrote eight extraordinary episodes. I mean, just really, really bold stuff. I couldn’t believe that it got as dark as it gets. It would be a Hard R-rated.”

This is not the first time that Farrell has spoken about the show’s gritty storyline. In March, he spoke to Jonatan Blomberg from MovieZine about the spin-off. The 47-year-old actor described the show’s premise as, “It’s one man’s rise to what he’s always dreamed of inhabiting, which is a certain power or social status.” He explains that at the end of The Batman, after the death of the character Carmine Falcone, there is a power vacuum in Gotham and the Penguin aspires to fill this vacuum. Farrell once again credited the show’s creator Lauren LeFranc and said, “It’s super dark. Lauren LeFranc wrote an incredibly twisted eight hours of television.”

Back in a November 2022 interview with Variety, Sarah Aubrey, the Head of Max Original Programming, said that events of The Penguin take place between The Batman and The Batman – Part II. She said that the show will “be a bridge between The Batman and its sequel.” She described Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot’s character as, a “hustler and a strategist with his own ambitions” and added that the show will be “about Gotham at that street level”.

The DC Comic fans are eagerly awaiting the release of the show. Its teaser trailer was released on March 22. The trailer already has over 30 lakh views. It shows Farrell in heavy prosthetic makeup. The show was initially scheduled for a mid-2024 release but was delayed due to the 2023 WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes.