The Penguin's first trailer puts Colin Farrell's Oz Cobblepot on the criminal warpath in The Batman TV spin-off

Tom Power
·4 min read
Oswald Cobblepot looks furious in the first teaser image for The Penguin TV show on Max.
Oswald Cobblepot looks furious in the first teaser image for The Penguin TV show on Max.
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Full spoilers follow for The Batman.

The first teaser for The Penguin, a TV spin-off of The Batman, has been revealed – and it teases the suspense-filled gang war that's set to erupt in Gotham City.

Colin Farrell, who played Oswald Cobblepot/The Penguin in the 2022 DC superhero flick, reprises his role as the stout crime lord in the limited Max series that's set to arrive in late 2024. The iconic character's show is the first of two TV projects that'll flesh out the Matt Reeves-developed cinematic universe, which stars Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/the legendary vigilante known as Batman.

But enough chatter. Take a look at The Penguin's first trailer below:

The teaser doesn't give much away, but it shows Farrell's Cobblepot is attempting to turn himself into Gotham's new kingpin. Indeed, following the death of the all-powerful crime lord Carmine Falcone – he was murdered by The Riddler – in The Batman, a power vacuum has emerged on the streets of Gotham, and Cobblepot isn't hanging around to wait for someone else to fill the void.

As the trailer reveals, Cobblepot is looking to position himself as the next Rex Calabrese, a former Gotham mob boss who was loved by everyone associated with the city's criminal underworld. Clearly, though, he won't have things going his way, as Sofia Falcone (How I Met Your Mother's Cristin Milioti), the heart-broken but resolute daughter of Carmine, vows to fight Cobblepot for control of Gotham's criminal underbelly. I don't know about you, but I'm already of the opinion that this will be one of the best Max shows we've seen in a long time.

The Penguin was announced in December 2021, with WBD confirming Farrell would return as The Penguin in a TV spin-off from The Batman. Three months later, ahead of the movie's release, Farrell exclusively told TechRadar that The Penguin would comprise eight episodes, and that he was "very excited" to explore Cobblepot's persona across a six- to eight-hour miniseries.

"He's got a lovely kind of sense of humour," Farrell told me in March 2022. "He's kind of funny, but he's kind of not, but he thinks he is. He's definitely dangerous and has a kind of a certain psychopath to him. But he's also a little bit broken inside, as many of us are, so it'll be fun to explore all those aspects."

Joining Farrell and Milioti on the cast list are Michael Kelly (Jack Ryan) as Johnny Viti, the Falcone crime family's underboss, Clancy Brown (Invincible, Gen V) as Salvatore Maroni, another of Gotham's mob bosses, and Michael Zegen (The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel) as Alberto Falcone, Sofia's son and apparent heir to the Falcone empire.

Rhenzy Feliz (Encanto), Shohreh Aghdashloo (Star Trek, X-Men), and Deirdre O’Connell (Outer Range) are also among the supporting cast, but their character identities are yet to be revealed.

With The Batman Part 2 recently delayed until late 2025, we'll need a side project like The Penguin to tide us over until the DC Elseworlds film (see how the two productions fit into James Gunn's DCU Chapter One plans) stealths its way into theaters. Here's hoping it delivers on its promise to give us a crime epic on Max, aka one of the world's best streaming services. Before it makes its debut, read our ending explainer about The Batman to see what it sets up about The Penguin's plot.

The Penguin is due to be released this Fall (that's autumn for non-US northern hemisphere dwellers, and spring for anyone who lives south of the equator). It'll air exclusively on Max stateside, and is likely to launch on Sky Atlantic in the UK and Binge/Foxtel in Australia.

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