Huge omission from year’s biggest TV hit The Penguin
It’s one of 2024’s big streaming hits, with an unrecognisable star, but the show’s creator has said they want you to “forget” what’s missing.
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AT COMIC CON IN NEW YORK
It’s one of the undisputed hit streaming shows of the year, with millions of viewers enthralled by Colin Farrell’s unrecognisable lead performance.
Award buzz for HBO’s The Penguin is already deafening.
But the show’s creator has told news.com.au about one glaring – and very deliberate – omission in the limited series.
And she has revealed her theory on why the show, rooted in DC Comics’ Batman universe, is resonating with audiences despite rumblings of superhero fatigue amid a number of notable comic-related flops.
Farrell, meanwhile, opened up about the “brutal” events that threatened to derail the show’s production.
The success of The Penguin, which streams on BINGE and Foxtel in Australia, may have surprised even its own creators.
In the US, 5.3 million viewers tuned in for its premiere last month, beating the premieres of the most recent season of The White Lotus and the final season of Succession – both mega-hits of their own.
It almost pipped the biggest HBO show of 2024 so far, True Detective: Night Country, starring Jodie Foster.
In Australia, Binge has said The Penguin is the “biggest new series of the year”.
Stream The Penguin now on BINGE, available on Hubbl.
A spin off of the 2022 Matt Reeves blockbuster The Batman, the show sees Farrell, who vanishes under a thick Gotham City drawl and layers of prosthetics and make-up, reprise his roles as Oswald Cobblepot, aka The Penguin.
After the death of crime lord Carmine Falcone at the end of The Batman, The Penguin delves into Oz’s scheming to become top dog in the Gotham mob.
But he has to contend with Sofia Falcone (played to rave reviews by Cristin Milioti) who has her own murderous intentions to rule the city’s underworld.
The Penguin is less colourful camp comic book and more gritty Sopranos.
‘Forget’ what’s missing from show
But it’s immediately obvious that in The Penguin there is something missing from this new iteration of one of Batman’s most celebrated foes.
And that’s Batman. He is nowhere to be seen.
Speaking to news.com.au on the sidelines of Comic Con in New York City, The Penguin’s writer, executive producer and show runner Lauren LeFranc said it was a very deliberate choice to banish Batman.
“This was Oz’s story to tell and I wanted to make it interesting enough that you would want to engage with him. Bringing Batman into it would interfere with that idea.
“He’s going to show up in the second film (The Batman Part II is due for release in 2026), and that’s his movie.”
“We had was to create dynamic characters that you have strong feelings towards that you do forget and stop thinking about the Batman.”
LeFranc said she “wanted to do right by the Penguin”.
“I was always really fascinated by the character, and I appreciated there hadn’t been many iterations of that character. I wanted to dig deeper into him and make this a psychological character study of this guy,” she said.
“Oz is a fun guy, even though he’s totally terrible and does all these violent things, he’s engaging and charming, and I hope you empathise with him – hopefully you don’t make excuses for him – but you see him fully for who he is.”
‘No female characters I could connect to’
Possibly competing with Farrell for award nominations will be Milioti. Her Sofia Falcone character only appeared in Batman comics from the mid-1990s and has never been as fleshed out as in The Penguin.
“Growing up reading comic books, I never felt there was a female character who was as rich as some of the other male characters,” said LeFranc.
“Few of them actually were dug into – for whatever reason. I would sit in the back set of my mum’s Volvo and envision myself as a male character because I didn’t have any women I felt I could connect to.
“I craved a character like Sofia. I’ve been given the Batman universe, I’m in this canon now, and they’re allowing me to tell the types of stories that I want to tell and I want to do that right but also make sure there’s less people in the back seat of their mum’s car wondering who they can imagine themselves as.”
Farell: ‘Not the plan’
Speaking at Comic Con, Colin Farrell said his physical transformation in The Penguin wasn’t the original intension for the character.
“There was maybe going to be a bit of a nose prosthetic but I was going to be a version of me,” he insisted.
“But the first time I saw (the suit and prosthetics) it was the first time that the actual character in my own imagination came alive.”
But, Farrell said, the filming of The Penguin was hard. Not just because of the prosthetics he had to wear every day, but because of the writers and actors strike that brought Hollywood to a screeching halt for months in 2023.
“We shot for three months and then there was a couple of strikes which were brutal on people and on the crews, it was just terrible.
“So we were stood down for six months, and then we came back.”
Superhero fatigue
Much has been said about whether audiences have tired of films and TV series based on comic book characters and superheroes.
There is talk of a superhero fatigue. Several recent films leaning into comic book universes have not performed as expected.
Yet The Penguin is a rolled gold hit.
“The benefit of superhero and comic book shows in general is that there’s an audience for everybody,” LeFranc told news.com.au.
“For me, it comes down to the characters. I care very much about the character work that I put in to every show to understand what their backstory is and that I try to keep you on your toes as a viewer.
“I want every decision a character makes feel organic to who they are, and have you believe that they would make those decisions by just deepening who that character is within every scene.”
Two dimensional just won’t work, Ms LeFranc said, and the audience can punish you for it.
“Make interesting, dynamic characters, give your audience a lot of credit, make sure they’re smart, have a little fun and make the stakes feel real”.
The Penguin is screening now on BINGE, available on Hubbl
Originally published as Huge omission from year’s biggest TV hit The Penguin
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