Colin Farrell says Batman spin-off The Penguin is "really dark" and "incredibly violent"

The Penguin star Colin Farrell has teased the new show – and it sounds like an intense, dark installment in Matt Reeves's Batman universe.

The new show recently dropped its first trailer, which sets up a Godfather-esque take on Gotham and Farrell's villain.

"It's dark, that's what I can tell you about it," Farrell told MovieZine. "It's really dark. And really heavy, I think – certainly was doing it. Which is not to say I didn't have fun, I had an amazing time. But it's incredibly violent."

He continued: "It's one man's rise to what he's always dreamed of inhabiting, which is a certain power or social status. The death of Carmine Falcone at the end of the film leaves this vacuum in Gotham to be filled, and so there are various people that are grabbing for that power, and this is Oswald's journey trying to rise to the top through extraordinary obstacles. And it's super dark. Lauren LeFranc wrote a really twisted eight hours of television."

According to Reeves, The Penguin show will set up the upcoming Batman sequel, too. "There's actually a whole little fabric of things we're wanting to do, the way we're doing with [the] Penguin and how that comes back into how that will lead into the sequel, and what that sequel is going to be," he revealed.

But, The Batman 2 has been delayed by a whole year, and now won't arrive until 2026. That's a long wait for more from the Caped Crusader, though the new DCU Chapter One: Gods and Monsters will be in full swing by then (The Batman is part of its own Elseworlds universe and separate from the DCU).

The Penguin arrives later this year on Max. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming DC movies and TV shows to fill out your watchlist.

I'm the Deputy Entertainment Editor here at GamesRadar+, covering all things film and TV for the site's Total Film and SFX sections. I previously worked on the Disney magazines team at Immediate Media, and also wrote on the CBeebies, MEGA!, and Star Wars Galaxy titles after graduating with a BA in English.