{"id":638945,"date":"2024-09-20T16:15:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-20T13:15:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-penguin-director-craig-zobel-wrote-a-fan-letter-to-matt-reeves-after-watching-the-batman\/"},"modified":"2024-09-20T16:15:00","modified_gmt":"2024-09-20T13:15:00","slug":"the-penguin-director-craig-zobel-wrote-a-fan-letter-to-matt-reeves-after-watching-the-batman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-penguin-director-craig-zobel-wrote-a-fan-letter-to-matt-reeves-after-watching-the-batman\/","title":{"rendered":"#\u2018The Penguin\u2019 Director Craig Zobel Wrote a Fan Letter to Matt Reeves After Watching \u2018The Batman\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n In March 2022, Craig Zobel returned home from seeing Matt Reeves\u2019 The Batman <\/em>during its opening weekend, and he immedia<\/a>tely emailed the filmmaker to express his admiration for the superhero crime drama. Mind you, the Emmy-nominated director behind 2021\u2019s Mare of Easttown<\/em> and 2020\u2019s controversial horror satire The Hunt<\/em> didn\u2019t know Reeves in the slightest, but this type of gesture is fairly common in the entertainment industry. Case in point, Cillian Murphy once emailed John Krasinski to compliment A Quiet Place<\/em>, before he ended up co-starring alongside Emily Blunt in the sequel, A Quiet Place Part II<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n So when it came time to hire directors for Reeves and showrunner Lauren LeFranc\u2019s The Batman<\/em> spinoff series<\/a>, The Penguin<\/em>, starring Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb, Zobel likes to think that Reeves potentially took note of that email before blessing his hiring as director and executive producer.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cI happ<\/a>ened to have his email. So I reached out to say, \u2018Hey, not for nothing, [The Batman<\/em>] was the superhero movie I wanted to see right now. You killed it.\u2019 That was my first time saying anything to Matt at all,\u201d Zobel tells The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n As the director of LeFranc\u2019s series premiere, plus writer Erika L. Johnson and Noelle Valdivia\u2019s second and third episodes, Zobel had a rather unusual task in front of him. Typically, the director of a series premiere or pilot establishes the overall aesthetic that future in-house or guest directors adhere to for the most part. But since The Penguin<\/em> was directly connected to Reeves\u2019 blockbuster movie, Zobel had to adapt to that existing palette like he\u2019d done as a guest director on HBO\u2019s The Leftovers<\/em> and Westworld<\/em>. Fortunately, Reeves and his DP Greig Fraser were at Zobel\u2019s disposal in order to help maintain visual continuity. (Oddly enough, Zobel\u2019s own work on Mare of Easttown<\/em> was recently mimicked by writer-director Jac Schaeffer and Kathryn Hahn in an extended portion of Agatha All Along<\/em>\u2019s series premiere.)<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe talked with Matt and [The Batman <\/em>DP] Greig Fraser a good bit before starting the show, and we asked them questions just on a very technical level,\u201d Zobel says. \u201cSo we used all of the same camera gear and lenses that are in the movie, and as far as lighting styles and stuff like that, I would say that we carried that through, even if the scenarios were slightly different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Those scenarios include more of Gotham City in the daytime, including the lower-income neighborhoods within the city and the higher-income suburbs that surround the city.<\/p>\n

\n The Penguin himself, Farrell, recently told a story about how he felt upon finishing season one, and at the time, he convinced himself that he was done playing Oz Cobb due to the enormous burden of the prosthetics and body suit. He\u2019s since walked that statement back while also stressing that the series was intended to be limited, but Zobel is now shedding some more light on why the actor has such a love-hate relationship with playing Cobb.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe were shooting in the winter, but he would get so hot because he literally has a pound of plastic on his face and he is wearing a bodysuit and all of this stuff,\u201d Zobel recalls. \u201cSo we ended up having to turn on the soundstage [AC], and all of us had to wear scarves and earmuffs, because we turned the temperature down as low as possible just to make it comfortable for him. There was also the persistent threat that if he got too hot, he would start sweating and then that would make the [prosthetics] detach. That never happened, but it was always in the back of my mind.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n Below, during a recent conversation with THR<\/em>, Zobel also discusses his desire to continue on in James Gunn and Peter Safran\u2019s new DC Universe, especially if it were to involve one particular DC Comics imprint. Then he explains why any comparisons between The Penguin<\/em> and other acclaimed series like The Sopranos, The Wire<\/em> and Breaking Bad<\/em> are purely coincidental.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n Normally, as the director of a series premiere or pilot, you set the tone, and establish the look and feel. But, in this case, you had to take your cues from Matt Reeves\u2019 <\/strong>The Batman<\/em><\/strong>, at least initially. So was it strange to kick off a show with an existing canvas already in place?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n It wasn\u2019t strange to kick off a show with a starting place already because I liked the movie that it was based on so much. I thought Matt created such a cool tone, and he found a new way into Batman, so I was excited enough that I wanted to chase it. When Matt\u2019s film came out, I went and saw it on opening weekend. I didn\u2019t know him, really, but I happened to have his email. So I reached out to say, \u201cHey, not for nothing, this was the superhero movie I wanted to see right now. You killed it. It was great and really cool.\u201d That was my first time saying anything to Matt at all.<\/p>\n

\n So I was excited to be a part of what that was, and as we started to put together our story, it was like, \u201cOh, this is actually from a different place. This is not the point of view of the Batman or a very rich Bruce Wayne. The Batman runs around at night after the sun goes down.\u201d So we had to deal with really practical things like what happens during the day, and this version of the Penguin isn\u2019t what we had seen prior to this. Even in the movie, he\u2019s peacocking a lot. He dresses quite flamboyantly, he has this crazy purple car and The Penguin<\/em> shows you that he was a very mid-level guy who\u2019s from the streets and has really pulled himself up by his bootstraps. So what does that look like? And what\u2019s the difference between what Matt was doing and where this story has to go? So it was really fun, actually, and it was an interesting challenge.<\/p>\n

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Cristin Milioti as Sofia Falcone and Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb in The Penguin<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Courtesy of HBO<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n Backing up a second, do you think Matt filed your email away in the back of his mind and revisited it when it came time to hire directors?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n I don\u2019t know. I hope so. I think so, yeah. He certainly already knew that I liked it.<\/p>\n

\n Matt\u2019s movie had a lot of night shoots, rain machines, amber lighting and gothic locations in Liverpool. There were also a lot of cityscape shots via the Volume. So how difficult was it to maintain visual continuity in a new medium?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n Well, we did some things very deliberately. We talked with Matt and [The Batman <\/em>DP] Greig Fraser a good bit before starting the show, and we asked them questions just on a very technical level. So we used all of the same camera gear and lenses that are in the movie, and as far as lighting styles and stuff like that, I would say that we carried that through, even if the scenarios were slightly different. We tried to apply at least some of the toolkit that they used in whatever situation we were in, and because it\u2019s a TV show, it\u2019s just bigger. You\u2019re going to encounter different scenarios so many more times, so we did our best. [The Penguin<\/em>] feels like it\u2019s inside of the Venn diagram and maybe is a little bit over here, but it felt like the way to have this visual continuity. It was also a TV show in the sense that we probably needed to move at a little bit faster pace than [Matt] was. We didn\u2019t really have the same luxury that a movie does in that way. But it was honestly really fun to be like, \u201cWell, what is the essence of [The Batman<\/em>] and how do we do that in the time we have?\u201d<\/p>\n

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Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb in The Penguin<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Macall Polay\/HBO<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n There\u2019s also some repurposed footage from <\/strong>The Batman<\/em><\/strong>, such as the series premiere\u2019s opening shot of Oz in the window at dawn. (The same can be said of <\/strong>The Penguin<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s news<\/a> footage, which reused Reeves\u2019 shot of Gotham Square Garden\u2019s stage being destroyed by the flood. Another example is the overhead shot of the arena once the dust settled, as well as a different angle of Bella Re\u00e1l\u2019s press conference.) Overall, how much unused or used footage were you given?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n That\u2019s pretty much confined to the very, very beginning sequence in the first episode, and we didn\u2019t start with the knowledge that we were even going to do that. Over the course of pre-production, we realized that we needed to get everybody up to speed. The hope was to do something where you don\u2019t need to have seen the movie to watch [The Penguin<\/em>], but also doesn\u2019t feel boring if you finished watching the movie five minutes before you turned on the show. What are the CliffsNotes that we can share?<\/p>\n

\n What considerations do you have to make for an actor who\u2019s covered in extensive prosthetics? Do you have to work quicker for Colin\u2019s sake? Are there certain movements he can and can\u2019t make?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n It turns out that a lot of things factor into shooting him. (Laughs<\/em>.) There\u2019s obviously the scheduling of it all. It\u2019s four hours of his day. It\u2019s three-and-a-half hours of just getting into makeup, and then he has to take it off every day and you can\u2019t just rip it off. You\u2019ll rip your skin. So there was that, which was wildly complicated, but it was also a fun challenge in a way. I was like, \u201cWell, that sounds almost too hard to do, so let\u2019s try to do that.\u201d But something that popped up was that it was very hot for him. We were shooting in the winter, but he would get so hot because he literally has a pound of plastic on his face and he is wearing a bodysuit and all of this stuff. So we ended up having to turn on the soundstage [AC], and all of us had to wear scarves and earmuffs, because we turned the temperature down as low as possible just to make it comfortable for him. There was also the persistent threat that if he got too hot, he would start sweating and then that would make the [prosthetics] detach. That never happened, but it was always in the back of my mind. My fingers were crossed the whole time.<\/p>\n

\n Late in the premiere, Oz is fully naked and tied up to a chair. Did the full body prosthetic add even more time to an already long process?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n That took most of a day just to shoot that full body prosthetic. Between the face and the body, it was six-and-a-half hours or something.<\/p>\n

\n Goodness gracious.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n (Laughs<\/em>.) Yeah, it was a lot. He also couldn\u2019t move. He was locked into certain positions. He couldn\u2019t just run around with that full body thing on; it wasn\u2019t built that way. So it was quite a thing.<\/p>\n

\n I presume you block shot all three of your episodes. Was your total number of episodes a response to helming all the episodes of <\/strong>Mare of Easttown <\/em><\/strong>and <\/strong>One Dollar<\/em><\/strong>? Did you not want to put yourself in that overwhelming position again?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n I would do that again, but for this particular thing, [three] felt like the right thing to do for whatever reason. In my mind, this was the first act of the story, and I was excited to get to do that. I actually haven\u2019t just<\/em> done the first episode or pilot of something, but this was the first time that I was trying to do [the first three]. So I like both [ways]. Doing three episodes is still three episodes; it\u2019s still a good chunk. So, every time I do [television], I learn more, and I feel much more confident in doing a whole series again at some point.<\/p>\n

\n Not long after you signed on to direct, James Gunn and Peter Safran were hired to run DC Studios and oversee Matt\u2019s \u201cElseworlds\u201d label alongside their own DCU. Did you field notes from them at any point, or were you mostly tied to [showrunner] Lauren LeFranc, Reeves and [producer] Dylan Clark?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n They were certainly around, and they were really supportive of the project. They have always been really excited about it. I don\u2019t remember any particular notes or anything in any specific way, but for sure, they were part of the team and around. Back in the day, when I was a kid, I was a big comic book nerd, especially in terms of the Elseworlds and the stranger, darker DC stuff, like Vertigo Comics. So I\u2019m excited to see what Peter and James do with that stuff, and I\u2019m also excited to see if I can help in some way.<\/p>\n

\n I think you should write an email to James like the one you sent to Matt.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n (Laughs<\/em>.) Yeah, you\u2019re right.<\/p>\n

\n Is there one particular DC character that you\u2019d love to tackle?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n There\u2019s a couple. I\u2019m definitely the most familiar with that Vertigo universe and the stuff in the darker side of [DC]. So that\u2019s where my brain immediately goes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n James Gunn is a really good filmmaker, and I can\u2019t wait to see what this new [Superman] movie is going to be. I\u2019m sure it\u2019s going to be awesome. If he makes a whole world out of what The Suicide Squad<\/em> and Peacemaker<\/em> are, I\u2019m in. That sounds awesome.<\/p>\n

\n At some point, you learned you were no longer making an HBO Max show; you were making a Max show. But then you eventually learned that you were making your fourth HBO show (<\/strong>The Leftovers<\/em><\/strong>, <\/strong>Westworld<\/em><\/strong>, <\/strong>Mare of Easttown<\/em><\/strong>). Considering the great luck you\u2019ve at HBO, was this a welcomed change?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n When you\u2019re in the middle of making a show, you\u2019re not really thinking about what kind of logo goes on the front of it, at least I wasn\u2019t. But I\u2019m excited that HBO is excited about the show and wants to support it in that way. It\u2019s awesome.<\/p>\n

\n We talked earlier about how you referenced Matt and Greig\u2019s <\/strong>The Batman<\/em><\/strong> aesthetic, but I recently talked to Kathryn Hahn and co. about their new show, <\/strong>Agatha All Along<\/em><\/strong>, which pays tribute to your work on <\/strong>Mare of Easttown. <\/em><\/strong>The majority of the series premiere is Kathryn\u2019s character doing her own take on Kate Winslet\u2019s Mare Sheehan and imagining herself in a similar show called <\/strong>Agnes of Westview<\/em><\/strong>. Is it pretty flattering to now be the one who\u2019s referenced?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n A hundred percent. That\u2019s amazing, especially when it\u2019s by Kathryn Hahn. She\u2019s the best. So that\u2019s really, really flattering. I didn\u2019t know about that, but that\u2019s cool to hear.<\/p>\n

\n The character even has a deceased son that weighs on her.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n Amazing.<\/p>\n

\n Some of your former collaborators are open to another season of Mare<\/em>, while others think that it\u2019s best to leave well enough alone. Do you lean one way or another?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n In my brain, there\u2019s definitely a possibility for that to happen at some point. It\u2019s tricky. When you make a show, you define what a character\u2019s big emotional wound is, and hopefully, there\u2019s some amount of catharsis in the character at the end of the show. And so the question then becomes, \u201cWell, how do you keep that going in a way?\u201d But I can totally see that happening at some point, and I would be excited to see it.<\/p>\n

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Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb in The Penguin<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Macall Polay\/HBO<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n Returning to <\/strong>The Penguin<\/em><\/strong>, did you expect Oz\u2019s opening monologue about Rex Calabrese to become the centerpiece of the trailer when you were shooting it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n Yeah, after we shot it, I was like, \u201cWell, that was pretty good. Colin did a great job with that. That was pretty special.\u201d It\u2019s rare to have a monologue that long in any episode of a TV show, and we were doing it at the very beginning of our show, which was quite fun. It was the first thing we shot, too, so it was quite fun that way.<\/p>\n

\n The title card also comes in at the perfect spot in the premiere. Was that scripted, or did everyone find it in the edit?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n Yeah, in the screenplay, it says, \u201cAh, SHHH \u2026 cut,\u201d or something. So we knew that the idea would be the end of the scene. Whether or not that was where we would put the title card, we didn\u2019t know, but that was, for sure, where the scene would end. (Writer\u2019s Note: In the actual premiere, Oz says, \u201cAhh, FUU!\u201d before it smash cuts to the title card.<\/em>)<\/p>\n

\n As someone who hates cilantro, I really appreciate what you did for my community in episode two.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n (Laughs<\/em>.) Yeah, we did closeups of cilantro, and I remember those closeups.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Rhenzy Feliz as Victor and Colin Farrell as Oz Cobb in The Penguin<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Macall Polay\/HBO<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n Victor (Rhenzy Feliz) reminds me a lot of a certain character from <\/strong>The Wire<\/em><\/strong> that I won\u2019t identify. Did the creative team ever make that comparison?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n Not directly, but I know what you mean. Maybe that was in the soup, as they say. It\u2019s possible to look at the show and see things like that or The<\/em> Sopranos<\/em>, but we never really talked about that. We weren\u2019t chasing that. I was always like, \u201cWell, that\u2019s just going to naturally happen.\u201d So it wasn\u2019t part of our lexicon; it\u2019s just part of our cultural understanding. For instance, we were never like, \u201cWhat did they do on The<\/em> Sopranos<\/em> for this or that?\u201d Instead, I was just like, \u201cWell, it\u2019ll look like The<\/em> Sopranos<\/em> at the end just because that\u2019s what we know.\u201d But we were never chasing that, really.<\/p>\n

\n To that point, the end of episode three is also reminiscent of a famous moment from <\/strong>Breaking Bad<\/em><\/strong>, except the character dynamics are reversed. Again, you probably didn\u2019t have that in mind, but similar to what you said, it\u2019s interesting how we all bring our own pop culture baggage into these things.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n Yeah, it\u2019s fun to be aware that certain things are going to work because they are sort of close to those moments, and it\u2019s interesting to think about it like that.<\/p>\n

\n ***
The Penguin\u2019s series premiere is now available on HBO and Max<\/em>. Subsequent episodes will debut every Sunday.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In March 2022, Craig Zobel returned home from seeing Matt Reeves\u2019 The Batman during its opening weekend, and he immediately emailed the filmmaker to express his admiration for the superhero crime drama. Mind you, the Emmy-nominated director behind 2021\u2019s Mare of Easttown and 2020\u2019s controversial horror satire The Hunt didn\u2019t know Reeves in the slightest,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":638946,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/09\/Craig-Zobel-and-Colin-Farrell-The-Penguin-Getty-H-2024.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[10780,151931,34347,4927,126775],"class_list":["post-638945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-colin-farrell","tag-craig-zobel","tag-matt-reeves","tag-the-batman","tag-the-penguin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=638945"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/638945\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/638946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=638945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=638945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=638945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}