Colin Farrell Comments on His Role as the Penguin in Matt Reeves' THE BATMAN, Hinting It's a Small Part
Fans are looking forward to a new spin on the classic caped crusader comic in director Matt Reeves’ upcoming film The Batman. The movie stars Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/Batman, and he is joined by familiar characters including Catwoman (Zoë Kravitz), The Riddler (Paul Dano), Carmine Falcone (John Turturro) and Oswald Cobblepot/Penguin, played by Colin Farrell.
What we know so far about the film is that The Batman is a dark, noir-style film that will lean into Batman in his detective mode. Reeves said that it’s going to tell a deep and psychological story. This will be a “year two” story for Batman that acknowledges his origin and how it’s still something that he’s “majorly struggling” with. There will be a series of murders and crimes that start taking place in Gotham and as Batman investigates those things, they begin to reveal the darkness of Gotham City to him.
We don’t know how big of a role each of the villains will end up playing in the film, but in a recent interview with Josh Horowitz on the Happy Sad Confused podcast (via CinemaBlend), Colin Farrell teased that the Penguin may have a smaller role than we expected.
Farrell said:
I’m only in for five or six scenes so I can’t wait to see the film because it won’t be ruined by my presence. I’ll get a little uncomfortable for the nine minutes I have, but the rest of it, I cannot wait to see how [director Matt Reeves] brought this world to life.
Who knows how the film will end up, but it sounds like Farrell didn’t shoot a whole lot of footage to equal a lot of screen time in the movie. This doesn’t mean his role won’t be impactful, but it is a bit of a bummer to hear we won’t see him so much. Fans hardly recognized Farrell in the trailer for the movie under the prosthetics he wears as the character. As always, I’m sure he will bring a fantastic performance to the screen, and I can’t wait to watch it.
The Batman is scheduled to hit theaters on March 4, 2022.