Matt Reeves says he's still in talks to get a second season of The Penguin

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Who wants more of The Penguin? It’s not a rhetorical question: HBO, Max, and executive producer Matt Reeves—who helped create Colin Farrell’s version of the iconic Gotham City baddie for his 2022 film The Batman—have all expressed a strong desire to get another season of the show, which was a ratings hit. But Farrell himself, as well as series showrunner/creative mastermind Lauren LeFranc, have expressed at least a bit of public reticence. Farrell, for all that he clearly loved the series, also gave at least one interview in which he made it extremely clear he’d gotten sick of being loaded up in prosthetics to play Oswald Cobb; LeFranc, meanwhile, has said that “we put it all out on the table” with the show’s first season, and while she didn’t rule out coming back, also made it clear it wasn’t an automatic “yes.”

Which has not stopped Reeves from trying to coax another season of the show into existence: Sitting down this week with his former Catwoman Zoë Kravitz for Variety‘s Directors On Directors interview series, Reeves stated that “Yeah, we’re talking to Lauren about doing another season.” While also talking to Kravitz—whose Batman character Selina Kyle got namechecked in the final episode of Penguin, in one of its more clear sequel hooks—about her thriller Blink Twice, Reeves said of The Penguin, “That was a special experience.”

From a ratings point of view, viewers certainly expressed a desire to get more of the series, which also starred a consistently scene-stealing Cristin Milioti: The show did decent numbers for HBO throughout, but also showed consistent growth, with Variety reporting that its season finale, at 2.1 million viewers, was a steady build from its premiere. The only real question is where the show would go from where it left off, much of which is predicated on whatever Farrell and Reeves end up doing with Penguin in The Batman 2. (As recently as last month, Farrell has said he has no idea what Cobb’s arc in the film is; Reeves suggested in his interview with Kravitz that he only recently completed the script, which begins shooting next year.) The Penguin made a pretty game attempt at sketching the full breadth of Cobb’s various neuroses, underlying personality flaws, and traumas in its eight episodes; it’s not clear what more there is to say about this guy, now that he’s climbed to the top of the Gotham rat pile.