No, it’s not because Carmine is dead. Sometimes scheduling conflicts simply can’t be avoided, and that’s the case when it comes to Mark Strong taking up the mantle of Carmine Falcone in The Penguin. The crime boss was originally portrayed by John Turturro in director Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022), but the actor wasn’t able to reprise the role in the HBO Original series. Thus, Strong was brought in to play the pivotal part. Showrunner Lauren LeFranc elaborated on the casting change in an interview with IGN:
“Well, practically, John was just unavailable to us. He had scheduling conflicts, and we couldn’t make it work, but honestly, I’m so thrilled that we brought Mark Strong on. I think he’s really good. Even though, maybe in the beginning when you first meet him, you might think, ‘Oh, well, for fans of The Batman, I’m so used to John Turturro,’ and obviously John’s a great actor, but I feel like the gravitas that Mark brings, it’s different. It’s very specific, and I hope, by the end of that episode [premiere], you’re just thinking, ‘That’s Carmine Falcone,’
and you’re engaged in what Mark brings to it.”
Matt Reeves, who serves as an executive producer on The Penguin, also discusses fleshing out Farrell’s Oz Cobb after this new version of the DC Comics’ character made his debut in 2022’s The Batman. Reeves said during the same interview:
“We wanted to do something here where it felt like an opportunity to do more of a gangster story, where you had somebody who was broken in some way that put them on the path for the dark American Dream and to try and understand who that guy was. And I think that whole idea, in The Batman, to see somebody who is not yet the kingpin, but we know he’s going to become the kingpin, it makes you lean forward to say, ‘Oh, how does he go from here?’ This guy who they think is kind of a joke.”
Gotham City’s Influence on The Penguin
The newly named Oz Cobb (Farrell) is ready to ascend to power, regardless of which actor suits up as Carmine Falcone in The Penguin. It’s already a win for Mark Strong, whose portrayal of the crime boss trumps the previous villains he tried to pull off for DC in the much-maligned Green Lantern (2011), as Sinestro, and when he played Doctor Sivana in Shazam! (2019). However, next to Oz, Gotham City could be the show’s next biggest character. Director Craig Zobel talked about the importance of Gotham during the same sit-down:
“The show’s themes are really about class disparity in a way that I don’t know that you always see in Batman [films] just by virtue of the main character is a multi-millionaire. We got to have this other perspective. I thought it was interesting. Almost always in a superhero movie, the last climax, like crazy stuff happens and there’s lots of damage and insanity, and then you don’t check in with those people until the next movie three years later or something. I think that it was appealing to say like what happens two days after that?”
Zobel continued:
“We did a lot of research. Kalina [Ivanov], the production designer, and I did a lot of research looking at after the levee is broken in New Orleans during [Hurricane] Katrina and sort of like how precarious the world really quickly in America turned on a dime for a second there and it was quite dramatic. And to try to imagine what Gotham City looked like during that and to make this kind of fake version of something like that but in a realistic way as much as we could was, I thought, a fun exploration.”
Even without the presence of the Caped Crusader, Oz Cobb’s power play for Gotham is compelling enough to propel the series forward without a Dark Knight to contend with, as the city limps on after the flooding caused by the Riddler (Paul Dano) at the conclusion of The Batman. For more, stay tuned as the HBO Original series moves to Sunday nights for Episode No. 2, which drops on September 29 at 9 p.m. EDT/PDT on both Max and HBO.