Colin Farrell earned a Golden Globe award and an Emmy nomination for playing Oz Cobb, aka the iconic Batman villain the Penguin, in his 2024 HBO series, but the character almost debuted in the DC Universe years earlier.

Matt Reeves isn’t a criminal mastermind like his The Penguin muse Oz Cobb, but he did steal one pretty major thing: Penguin himself. Margot Robbie exposed the director’s underhanded dealings in a recent Entertainment Weekly interview with her A Big Bold Beautiful Journey co-star Colin Farrell—who just happens to play The Penguin in The Batman and the eponymous,

His film features Penguin in a rather important role, one that has since gotten even more important thanks to the award-winning HBO spinoff show. So, had Reeves not asked for the character to be taken out of Birds of Prey,