Despite being the first major spin-off to emerge in Matt Reeves’ The Batman universe, The Penguin producer has suggested that you don’t need to have seen the original.
“Matt’s words – and I love this phraseology – is that the movie vibrates against the show and the show vibrates against the movie,” Dylan Clark tells SFX magazine in the new issue, which features Agatha All Along on the cover and hits newsstands on September 4. “They inform each other. You don’t need to watch the movie in order to enjoy the show. I just think it enriches it. They are connected.”
That being said, the new spin-off, which focuses on Colin Farrell’s Oz Cobb does begin pretty soon after the events of The Batman. Gotham is recovering from the flood unleashed by the Riddler at the end of the movie. Amid the chaos, Oz plots his ascent to become the head of the city’s criminal underworld.
Reeves adds to SFX that he views the show as a “Scarface gangster story”. He explains of pitching it: “What I told Colin at the time is that after what happens to Falcone there’s going to be this power vacuum, and the thing about your version of the Penguin is everyone thinks he’s a joke to a degree. They underestimate him. Meanwhile he has this coiled ambition inside him. He is going to grab for power, and I see that as being one of the core aspects of the next movie.
“So I said to the network I was going to do an almost Scarface gangster story about a rise to power, that was really going to be an examination of what was inside Oz, what was driving him, what lack inside of him drove this voracious need for power. Literally on the call they were like, ‘Oh, that’s the show! We want to do that show!'”
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The Penguin begins on HBO on September 19 and Sky Atlantic and NOW on September 20. Read more in the latest issue of SFX magazine, which features Agatha All Along on the cover and will be available from Wednesday, September 4.
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