The Batman - Part II gets exciting production update following release date shuffle

Following the news from The Hollywood Reporter that The Batman – Part II has been delayed for over a year, fans who are invested in Matt Reeves' shared universe outside of the DCU that James Gunn, Peter Safran, and their Brain Trust have created for DC Studios have been quite disappointed. Fair not, there is still hope!

As per CBR, while the release date for The Batman – Part II was pushed back from Oct. 3, 2025 to Oct. 2, 2026, everyone’s franchise scooper Jeff Sneider has stated that the sequel to the original 2022 film will begin to roll cameras in April 2025 to give ample time for the writer/director, his co-writer Mattson Tomlin, and the rest of the creative time to finalize the screenplay, casting, and preliminary duties before principal photography.

For those who cannot wait to explore the world that Reeves established in the first part, you have The Penguin miniseries on Max to look forward to that is set to drop sometime later this year which takes place roughly a week following the events of The Batman and sees the rise of Oswald Cobblepot aka The Penguin played by Colin Farrell become the lead crime boss in Gotham’s criminal underbelly.  

The Penguin stars Colin Farrell, Christin Milioti, Rhenzy Feliz, Myles Humphus, Berto Colon, James Madio, Scott Cohen, Craig Walker, Michael Zegen, Theo Rossi, Clancy Brown, Michael Kelly, Carmen Ejogo, François Chau, David H. Holmes, and Jared Abrahamson.

Lauren LeFranc is writing the series and is serving as the showrunner, Matt Reeves, Dylan Clark, Farrell, LeFranc, Daniel Pipski, Adam Kassan, Craig Zobel, and Bill Carraro are credited as executive producers.  

The Penguin is produced by 6th and Idaho Productions, Dylan Clark Productions, DC Studios, and Warner Bros. Television. It is expected to be released on the Max streaming service in late 2024.

How does Penguin tie in with The Batman – Part II?

So far, the only cast who is confirmed to be in Part II is Robert Pattinson, Andy Serkis, and Jeffrey Wright, with Zoë Kravitz, Colin Farrell, and Barry Keoghan to reprise their roles in Part II but expect Farrell’s Penguin and Koeghan’s latest iteration of The Joker to play slightly bigger roles, although there is still the question of who the Big Bad will be, which Sneider claimed is Tommy Elliot aka Hush, the childhood friend of Bruce Wayne in the comics.

The Batman was a critical and commercial success, which currently sits at 85% on Rotten Tomatoes and performed extremely well at the box office with a gross of $772.2 million against an estimated $185 million production budget thus making it the seventh-highest grossing film of 2022.

It was praised for its direction, visual style, score, and performances and was nominated for three awards at the Academy. I felt the last film was fantastic in the way it approached the character, which for the first time dug further into the detective aspect he is known for and the story was compelling despite its long running time.

Apart from being overtaken at sixth place by Wakanda Forever, I still regard the film as gripping: see my full review and can’t wait for Part II.