Right after Colin Farrell’s Oswald “Oz” Cobblepot shares a heartfelt waltz with his mother in the latest trailer for The Penguin, he sets out on a deadly crusade stabbing his first victim with a pocket knife and throwing the next into a body bag.
“The world ain’t set up for the honest man to succeed,” Cobblepot says in the trailer. “That should be the American dream right there. You know, a beautiful story with a happy ending. But that ain’t the way the world works.”
In the eight-episode series The Penguin, Farrell stars as the Batman supervillain as he “makes a play to seize the reins of the crime world in Gotham,” the synopsis reads. The Lauren LeFranc-created series is part of the new “Batman Saga,” which began with Matt Reeves’ 2022 film, The Batman, starring Robert Pattinson. The series picks up after The Batman, which ends in the assassination of mob boss Carmine Falcone. During a San-Diego Comic-Con presentation over the weekend, LeFranc said she felt inspired by the latest DC comics spinoff, after watching an early version of The Batman.
“I wanted to do justice to the world that Matt created,” she said (via USA Today). “Oz was this wild man, a charming, problematic, interesting, weird dark soul that I wanted to dig into.”
Farrell, who joined the pop-culture convention via video chat, said he grew up watching Burgess Meredith’s Penguin on the 1960s Batman TV show.
“The lore of this world held such attraction to me,” he said. “I was just humbled and excited about being in Gotham.”
During the presentation, Reeves also announced that Farrell will return as Penguin in The Batman: Part II, which arrives Oct. 2, 2026. The Penguin‘s cast includes Cristin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Deirdre O’Connell, Clancy Brown, and Michael Zegen. The series debuts Sept. 19 via Max.
