The Batman: Colin Farrell’s Penguin was inspired by The Godfather’s Fredo

It’s safe to say that The Batman is one of the more anticipated films of the new year. While it will definitely be fun to see what Matt Reeves has whipped up with this latest incarnation of Batman, I’m probably not alone in saying that Colin Farrell’s Penguin is the big draw for me. While Farrell has previously said that The Penguin isn’t in The Batman as much as we would hope, he did draw inspiration from one of the greatest films of all time: The Godfather.

While speaking with Empire, Colin Farrell said that The Batman director Matt Reeves brought up Fredo Corleone from The Godfather as a source of inspiration the actor could draw from.

[Reeves] mentioned Fredo to me, because Fredo’s crippled by the insignificance that he lives within, in a family that is full of very strong, very bright, very capable, very violent men. Which is why he commits the act of betrayal that he does, because he’s weak, he’s kind of broken, and he’s in pain. There is a kind of fracture at the core of Oz, which fuels his desire and his ambition to rise within this criminal cabal. Where that rise goes… I would love to get to explore that in the second film, if that was ever to happen.

Thanks to prosthetics and costuming, Colin Farrell is damn near unrecognizable as The Penguin. When the actor put it all together for the first time, Penguin was born. “I walked around the studio and then the voice work I had done with Jessica Drake, the dialect coach, started coming out and Oz just came alive,” Farrell said. “It was extraordinary.“

The Batman stars Robert Pattinson as Bruce Wayne/The Batman, with Jeffrey Wright playing James Gordon, Paul Dano playing the Riddler, Zoe Kravitz playing Selina Kyle, Andy Serkis playing Alfred, John Turturro playing Carmine Falcone, Peter Sarsgaard playing Gotham D.A. Gil Colson, and Colin Farrell playing Oswald Cobblepot aka the Penguin. The Batman is set to hit theaters on March 4, 2022.