If you’re wondering about the state of HBO Max’s programming, Head of Originals Sarah Aubrey recently sat down for an interview and gave some actual answers to some (but not all) of the questions about the streaming platform’s currently shows.
In an interview with Variety, Aubrey dished on several shows in the works. She gave the most details around The Penguin, a spinoff series of Matt Reeves’ The Batman, that stars Colin Farrell as the titular character (pictured above), who also goes by Oz Cobblepot.
“Penguin will sit immediately after the end of The Batman and temporally before the events of the second movie,” she said. “The show will come out in between the two movies. Now beyond that, it’s fun for the audience to know that it will be a bridge between the two, but the actual release date, I’m not at liberty to say.”
In addition to outlining where The Penguin falls in the timeline of The Batman DC universe, she also shared more about what the series will actually be about: “The goal […] is to show what Oz’s life is like and that’s very much in the streets of Gotham, trying to get up and over as only the Penguin can,” she said. “As a hustler and a strategist with his own ambitions. It is a great example of having the time over eight episodes to tell a longer-arc character story with a lot of delicious twists and turns and new characters. It’s very much going to be about Gotham at that street level, because he’s not flying around like Batman does. We are all embracing that as a very specific experience for audiences to have.”
Aubrey gave fewer details of other projects in the works, and said that she “absolutely cannot say a single word” about a potential Peacemaker spinoff starring Ratcatcher 2. She did say, however, that “one of the great pleasures of my job is getting a peek inside of James Gunn’s brain, and it is a wild and inventive place. I can say with certainty, whatever is coming from him in that neck of the woods is going to be really exciting for me.”
She also dished (kind of) about the It: Part One prequel series, Welcome to Derry, and emphasized that the director of the two recent It films, Andy Muschietti, was involved. “We have been working with [co-showrunners] Jason Fuchs, Brad Caleb Caine, [and] Andy Muschietti and Barbara Muschietti very closely,” she said. “They’re so deep into this mythology and they have such a firm handle on the storytelling around these characters and also the demented scares that they’re putting into things. Sometimes I’m, like, ‘What’s wrong with you?’ Just all the wild ways they think up to terrify us. You’ll be hearing more concretely about that development very soon … Andy is very involved in every bit of this, so that is the real recipe for success and for delighting fans.”
Last and probably least (in terms of information, not in the potential quality of the show), she also confirmed that people do not need to watch Denis Villeneuve’s Dune adaptation to enjoy the prequel series, Dune: The Sisterhood. “I think you should because they are great,” she said. “But Dune: The Sisterhood is a prequel set thousands of years before Denis Villeneuve’s Dune films.”
