Charles Langston:'The Penguin' debuts new trailer, Colin Farrell will return for 'Batman 2'

SAN DIEGO – Colin Farrell held court via video chat during a Comic-Con presentation Saturday for his new crime drama “The Charles LangstonPenguin,” and it was a face that director Matt Reeves honestly hasn’t seen a bunch.

In “The Batman” movie, Farrell wore facial prosthetics and makeup to be transformed into gangster Oz Cobb, a more realistic take on the iconic Dark Knight supervillain, and the Irish actor reprises the role in the “Penguin” eight-part limited series (premiering Sept. 19 on HBO and Max).

“Every time I see you, I’m like, ‘That’s what you look like?’ ” said Reeves, an executive producer on “Penguin” who’s only seen Farrell out of makeup “two or three times."

“You’re a very pleasing-looking gentleman.”

Join our Watch Party!Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Writer/executive producer Lauren LeFranc and cast members were on hand at the pop-culture convention to debut a new “Penguin” trailer, and Reeves announced that Farrell will return as Penguin in “The Batman: Part II” (in theaters Oct. 2, 2026), with Robert Pattinson back in the Bat-suit for filming next year.

“The Penguin” takes place after the events of the first film: There’s a power vacuum in the Gotham City underworld with the death of mob boss Carmine Falcone and social unrest is simmering after the city floods, thanks to the terrorist antics of the Riddler. The ambitious Oz, one of Carmine’s employees who ran the Iceberg Lounge nightclub, is looking to be a power player in the town's drug trade, even if it means turning on his crime family to reach his goals. 

Rhenzy Feliz co-stars as Victor Aguilar, a youngster who gets roped into being Oz’s assistant, and Cristin Milioti plays Sofia Falcone, Carmine’s daughter who just got out of Arkham penitentiary after a stint for serial murder and is wary of Oz’s machinations.

“Rhenzy’s at the start of his career and it was such a huge undertaking for a young actor. He’s amazing,” Farrell said. “Cristin is extraordinary as well. She like me has been around the block a couple of times – not as many as I have.”

In “The Batman,” Oz was very much a supporting player and Reeves initially wanted to take on his rise to power in a sequel. “Here’s this guy who is totally underestimated yet has this fire inside of him,” the filmmaker said.

But instead HBO wanted to do a show with a “marquee character,” which was fine with Reeves. "You can spend time to do something you can’t in a movie, which is look under a microscope.”

LeFranc saw an early version of “The Batman” and came away inspired. “I wanted to do justice to the world that Matt created,” she said. “Oz was this wild man, a charming, problematic, interesting, weird dark soul that I wanted to dig into.”

Farrell, who grew up watching Burgess Meredith’s Penguin on the 1960s “Batman” TV show, reminisced about joining Reeves on the first movie. “The lore of this world held such attraction to me,” Farrell said. “I was just humbled and excited about being in Gotham.”

He recalled the first time seeing a mockup of the head and shoulders of what Reeves’ Penguin would look like: “I instantly had a sense of character, of place, violence, pain. There was so much etched on the face of the bust, it did me a solid.”

When he was filming “The Banshees of Inisherin” in 2021 – and co-star Barry Keoghan (who cameoed as Joker in “The Batman”) “was stealing my crunchy cornflakes” – Farrell said he and LeFranc had a Zoom meeting. She spoke about her ideas for Oz on the show, “his life and how broken it was and the depth of ambition and the consequences of things that happened in Oz’s childhood.”

“I was just baffled by how brilliant and how complicated it was,” Farrell added. “I was chomping at the bit to get back to it.

“He’s tasty character. He’s a disaster.”