When Matt Reeves was writing The Batman, he realized that his Robert Pattinson-starring feature was just the beginning of what he and his producing partner Dylan Clark wanted to do in what they’ve dubbed the “Batman Epic Crime Saga” universe.
In a conversation with Entertainment Weekly, Reeves first set his eyes on a show about the Gotham Police Department and then one about Arkham Asylum. The execs at Warner Bros. Discovery, however, nixed those projects and told him to “lean harder into the marquee characters.”
From that note, The Penguin was born. The series stars Colin Farrell as Oz “the Penguin” Perkins and is, according showrunner Lauren LeFranc, “a Scarface story.”
“We’re in Oz’s world,” LeFranc told EW. “We’re living in the underbelly of the city. Oz is a mover and a shaker. He can’t always be trusted. He’s very smart and very methodical, but he’s also extremely impulsive. You can’t predict what he’s going to do.”
The show is also apparently a bridge between 2022’s The Batman and that film’s sequel, which is currently slated to come out on October 2, 2026. According to LeFranc, The Penguin starts a week after the events of The Batman, where the Riddler (Paul Dano) destroyed the sea wall and flooded Gotham, and goes “almost directly” into the sequel feature.
Clark also teased in the EW article that we’ll see more shows set in the Batman Epic Crime Saga universe. “There’s another television exploration we’re going to do,” he said. “We’re looking at this entire world as it relates to who Batman is—the antagonists around them, all the crime that has to be navigated in the city—and trying to figure out where are the areas that are best to explore.”
The Penguin is set to premiere on HBO and Max sometime this September.
