“When I was a kid, there was a gangster, real old-school type — Rex Calabrese; he was a big deal. He helped people. He saw you on the street, he’d call out to you,” Farrell’s Penguin regales.
“When I’m 14, he has a heart attack and dies still holdin’ a cigar” says Penguin. “In my neighborhood, they throw a parade in his honor. A friggin’ parade. And it wasn’t fancy, but it was the gesture. The show of love, of what he meant. Can you imagine to be remembered like that?”
Farrell reprises his Batman villain role in this eight-part DC Studios drama series that continues the epic crime saga of the Matt Reeves film The Batman. The DC movie from Warner Bros. grossed over $772.2 million worldwide, grossed $177 million in profits, and was one of the most-watched films on the HBO Max streaming service.
Much like the motif Reeves established in his film, it's early days here Penguin: He's not the tuxedo-clad gentleman we know from the classic Batman (1966) television series or even from the Fox reboot Gotham, in which the villain was played by Robert Lord Taylor, but rather a man in leather jackets with a gun on the street making his move.
Reeves' Batman is part of a DC else-verse, running concurrently with Peter Safran and James Gunn's Phase One of their Gods and Monsters DC Universe (which begins with Superman's theatrical release on July 11, 2025). Reeves' sequel, The Batman II, hits theaters on October 2, 2026.
Safran and Gunn have their own Batman in the works with Andy Muschietti directing, The Brave and the Bold, which follows Bruce Wayne and the feisty, renegade son he didn't know he had: Damien Wayne, who takes on the alias Robin.
