Matt Reeves Stopped ‘Birds of Prey’ From Using Penguin as the Villain, Margot Robbie Reveals: He Said ‘I’m Going to Use Him in My Thing’

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. Farrell’s DC counterpart Margot Robbie, who has played the psychotic Harley Quinn in several movies, revealed that Penguin almost appeared as the main villain in her 2020 DC movie “Birds of Prey.”

Farrell and Robbie are currently starring together in the fantasy romance movie “A Big Bold Beautiful Journey,” and Robbie told Entertainment Weekly that Penguin was in the original “Birds of Prey” script. However, Matt Reeves, who directed and wrote “The Batman” and executive produced “The Penguin,” stopped “Birds of Prey” from using his villain.

“The first draft that Christina [Hodson] wrote of ‘Birds of Prey,’ the villain was the Penguin,” Robbie told Farrell while they spoke to EW. “And then Matt Reeves said, ‘Don’t use the Penguin. I’m going to use him in my thing.’ And so we swapped it to Black Mask.”

Ewan McGregor went on to play Black Mask, another famous Batman bad guy, in “Birds of Prey.” A shocked Farrell asked Robbie how Hodson’s version of Penguin was in the movie, and Robbie said it was “amazing.” She also said that she still has a copy of the original script. “It’s probably on my computer,” she told Farrell. “You could read it.”

It’s unclear when DC fans will see Robbie’s Harley Quinn pop up in the rebooted DC Universe next, but Farrell is expected to reprise the Penguin in Reeves’ “The Batman: Part II” when it hits theaters Oct. 1, 2027.