MATT REEVES TOLD US EXACTLY WHY BATMAN ISN'T IN "THE PENGUIN"

When audiences tune in for the premiere of The Batman spin-off series, The Penguin, viewers may wonder why a certain man dressed as a bat doesn’t appear on screen. Executive Producer Matt Reeves has already alerted fans that The Batman’s Robert Pattinson will not show up again until The Batman Part II, but that hasn’t stopped fans and Reddit commenters alike from asking the question, “The Penguin show… no Batman?”

“He's more of a specter in the city,” Reeves tells Esquire in a new interview about the future of his Bat-projects. “One of the things that was really exciting about the opportunity to do a show was to let it really focus on that rogues' gallery character and change points of view. The whole movie is done very deliberately from Batman and Bruce's point of view. The only scenes that aren't from his point of view are from Riddler's point of view. And that was done to make you think for a moment: Wait, is that Batman or Riddler's point of view? This was like: What if we could just go down that alley and follow Oz in the wake of what happened in the movie?”

True to Reeves' word, The Penguin follows Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb as he worms his way up the criminal ladder. Playing both sides of the Falcone and Maroni mob war, the Penguin seeks to take advantage of the power vacuum created by the Riddler’s actions in The Batman—and seize Gotham’s underbelly for himself. “This is almost like a gangster movie,” Reeves says. “The idea was to see Oz reach for power in this moment.”

The Penguin premieres its first episode on Thursday, September 19, before switching to weekly HBO drops on Sunday. The series bridges and “deepens” the two films, according to Reeves, with the sequel set for release in theaters on October 3, 2025.

2024-09-19T17:33:19Z dg43tfdfdgfd