Colin Farrell leaves top hat, penguin suit at home in first trailer for “The Penguin”

"The Penguin" strikes a serious, gangster movie tone in first look before its fall premiere on Max.

It's been almost a year since the first teaser for The Penguin arrived, promising the return of Colin Farrell's minor but scene-stealing bad guy from 2022's The Batman.

This version of the iconic villain doesn't squawk like Burgess Meredith in the Adam West-led TV show and won't raise an army of rocket-clad penguins like Danny DeVito's fish-slurping Penguin in Batman Returns.

Farrell's Oz Cobb (usually known in the pages of DC Comics as Oswald Cobblepot) is a menacing mob boss whose Penguin moniker is more of a nod to his physical appearance than to an actual affinity for flightless birds.

The trailer features Oz telling a story about "a real old-school" gangster, Rex Calabrese. His positioning, almost as though he's talking to a therapist, and focus on legacy evoke a Tony Soprano-like sense of authority.

When Calabrese dies, Oz continues and the neighborhood throws "a friggin' parade" in his honor. "It wasn't fancy," he says, "but it was a gesture. The show of love, of what he meant. Can you imagine to be remembered like that?"

He wants the same respect. However, the evidence suggests he won't be quite so beloved, as the trailer briefly cuts to shots of the Penguin yelling, swinging an ax, and firing guns.

The eight-episode series will focus on the early days of the Penguin, as director Matt Reeves showed in The Batman. Not many details about the plot have been revealed. However, it appears that the creators have a little latitude in terms of not being hemmed in by the rest of James Gunn's new vision for DC.

DC's new co-chiefs, Gunn and Peter Safran, have said that Reeves' The Batman universe is an "else-verse" and won't be part of their phase one "Gods and Monsters" plan for DC. That universe is scheduled to start in July 2025 with the release of Superman.

In Reeves' world, The Penguin will arrive this fall, and the sequel movie, The Batman Part II, will be released in October 2026 after it was recently pushed back a year.

While there isn't an exact release date for The Penguin on Max, it will also feature Cristin Milioti, Clancy Brown, François Chau, and Michael Kelly, among others.

Watch the trailer for The Penguin above.

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