The eight-episode HBO series 'The Penguin' is set to premiere on JioCinema Premium on 20th September. A bridge between The Batman (2022) and its upcoming sequel, the series traces the rise of Oz Cobb aka Penguin (Colin Farrell) from an underdog criminal to the kingpin of Gotham City. He is no ordinary villain, but a terrifying foe, a formidable power in the underworld, and Batman's greatest challenge.

The internet is already abuzz with Colin Farrell's remarkable transformation into Penguin. Anticipation is high for this supervillain and his story. With an ensemble cast of Cristin Milioti, Michael Kelly, Shohreh Aghdashloo and others, and developed by showrunner Lauren LeFranc, this series is set to be a gamechanger in the DC Universe.

Colin Farrell, who essays Penguin recently spoke about becoming Oz Cobb for the series. He was all praises for Mike Marino who designed Penguin. 'I was so fascinated and overwhelmingly impressed by the brilliance of what Mike Marino designed for Penguin in The Batman. I'd never done anything with prosthetics. I've had a little cut here and there through the years, or a swollen knuckle, or some little gelatin piece put on me, but I'd never been totally consumed by, buried beneath this overhaul. It was a character designed by Mike Marino, as a lover of comic books, as a lover of the Penguin, going back to Burgess Meredith and then Danny DeVito. Mike Marino had conversations with Matt Reeves when Matt was about to embark on directing The Batman, about this Penguin character Oz Cobb, and who he was, and what his psychological state was, and what his ambitions were. Then Mike went off, and he designed this visage and sculpted this bust based on a cast that he did of me. I had no idea what it was going to look like.'

Farrell also described his reaction upon seeing how he would look in the series. 'I ended up in an office in London a few months before we were going to shoot The Batman, and I'll never forget Matt Reeves saying to me, 'Have you been talking to Marino? Did you see what he did? Did you see what you're gonna look like?' Even that line, I'll never forget it. Did you see what you're gonna look like? It had a power to it. And he opens up this Macbook Air and he went, 'Look!' There was a picture of the 3D bust, and I malfunctioned. I went, 'Wait a second. I'm gonna look like that?' He went, 'Yeah, Marino thinks he can do it. It's gonna be a bit of time in the morning. But what do you think?' And I went, 'It's fucking beautiful.' There was a whole history of a human being on this face. There was a scar, there were the pockmarks, the remnants of teenage acne. There was a harshness and a sense of tragedy to it. I was just overwhelmed by what I was seeing. I had been struggling with the six or seven scenes that I had in the script for The Batman. They were all really good, Matt's an amazing writer, but I just didn't feel like I had any inspired thoughts on how I could inhabit the character or this world ' but, as soon as I saw it, this new wave of excitement overcame me. The character spoke to me in much clearer terms, and a whole world of possibility that my imagination wouldn't have been strong enough to concoct opened.'

Finally, Farrell discussed what he felt when he looked at himself in the mirror with all prosthetics. The final look was way beyond his expectations, and he was nowhere to be seen under Penguin. 'When I looked in the mirror [as Oz], [there was] no me looking back. My eyes were there, but everything else was just overwhelmingly different. Just other. You look in the mirror and you might have a beard or a mustache, or an eye-patch, but you're looking back at you. With this, I was nowhere to be found.' The Penguin premieres on 20th September on JioCinema Premium.