The Batman producer talks Penguin spin-off: "It's almost like a Scarface story"

The Batman producer Dylan Clark has revealed a few details about the upcoming Penguin spin-off show that will center on Colin Farrell's new take on the iconic villain.

"We’re doing one with Colin [Farrell, as Oswald Cobblepot], seeing Oz rise to power, almost like a Scarface story,” he tells SFX Magazine in the latest issue. "It’s exciting to do something like that just as a standalone, but it speaks to the character and our movie, so that you’ll go back to the movie [and say], 'Oh, I see that backstory there, that line refers to this'."

"He’s got this potentially incredible platform, he’s got this money, can do all these things," Clark says. "But deep down, could he ever actually just be a human being? Can he be fully an emotional human being? Can he ever be loved? And we haven’t really seen him get to that place before.

"Maybe in [director] Matt Reeves’s exploration, he gets there, but it’s not in this movie. This is him, in Year Two, still working out what he represents in this world and how he should feel. He’s a work in progress."

Fundamentally, Reeves’s exploration – for this film at least – was driven by one thing.

“What was important for me – critical for me was... there have been so many great Batman movies and I could not go into doing this one without feeling like we would have something definitive to say about this myth,” the director states.

“A lot of these great myths have that power, which is that if they truly resonate, they allow you to find a way to take the aspects of it that people love and then do something new with it and then people connect to it all over again. I hope that’s what we’ve done.”

For more on SFX's blowout feature on The Batman, including interviews with Robert Pattinson and more from director Matt Reeves, then be sure to pick up the latest issue of SFX – available now. You can also take advantage of our cut-price digital and print bundles and take SFX wherever you go.

I'm the Editor of SFX, the world's number one sci-fi, fantasy and horror magazine – available digitally and in print every four weeks since 1995. I've been editing magazines, and writing for numerous publications since before the Time War. Obviously SFX is the best one. I knew being a geek would work out fine.

With contributions from

Jack ShepherdFreelance Journalist