While Batman has become a ubiquitous character on the big screen, and some of his villains, like The Joker, have been seen almost as often, there are some members of the famous rouges gallery that don't get quite that much attention. The Penguin is one of Batman's most famous villains that hasn't gotten his due in film, but Colin Farrell will help to change that when he takes on the role in the forthcoming Matt Reeves directed Batman film.
The only other actor to play The Penguin in the movies is Danny DeVito, in 1992's Batman Returns. DeVito says he's excited to see what the recently cast Colin Farrell will do with the character, because the character is one he had a lot of fun playing, and it's now being handed over to a friend. According to DeVito...
Collin is a great actor. I'm excited to see what he'll do in the part. It's a really great, many-layered character so I'm very, very excited to see that because I was a big fan of the comic books and I loved working with Tim, Tim Burton and I had a hell of a shorthand with that one and I love doing Oswalt so I'm very much looking forward to my friend Collin and see what he has to do.
Danny DeVito and Colin Farrell co-starred together in Disney's Dumbo remake from earlier this year, and now the pair will have another point of connection. Colin Farrell joins a cast that includes Paul Dano as The Riddler, Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman, and Robert Pattinson as the new Batman.
A lot of people are probably looking forward to seeing Colin Farrell as Penguin as much as Danny DeVito tells ComicBook.com that he is. The only other place that we've seen the character of Penguin was on the FOX TV show Gotham, and as a prequel series, it had some freedom to take a lot of liberties with the traditional character.
At this point, we don't know enough about Matt Reeves' movie to even guess what direction this character could take. We're not expecting the film to be an origin story, but that's about the extent of what we can say for sure. Beyond that, it's really anybody's guess. We can probably be confident that Colin Farrell's Penguin is going to be very different than the one created by Tim Burton and Danny DeVito, but it's going to be a while before we have a chance to know for sure.
The Batman, which may or may not even be called that, is looking to get in front of cameras in the next couple months, but it won't be until the summer of 2021 that we'll actually get to see what Colin Farrell has truly brought to the character of Penguin.
