Colin Farrell Says Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II Script Left Him Deeply Moved

Colin Farrell’s Penguin might be a fan favorite, but the man under all that silicone is feeling the grind. The Batman Part II is moving ahead, Farrell’s back as Oz Cobb, and he’s wildly impressed by the script — even as he remains very much not thrilled about the daily transformation it takes to get there.

The eight-hour face

Farrell has been open about the price of becoming Gotham’s waddling kingpin: it’s an eight-hour sit in a makeup chair. He says he loved what the look did for the character, but by the end of the process he was over it and has zero desire to do another full-day glue-and-latex marathon. Totally get it. Great prosthetics are cool; eight hours of small talk is a marathon.

Yes, he read Part II — and it hit him hard

Despite the prosthetic fatigue, Farrell is returning for Matt Reeves’ sequel, with production expected to start next year. He told Variety he’s already read the script and got surprisingly emotional going through it. He tried to dodge specifics — the studio lawyers are real — but still let a few telling thoughts slip.

"I’m contractually obligated to shoot that question down, to meet your contractual obligation with my contractual obligation. What a sword fight... I read the script, and it’s just brilliant."

He also joked that he’d probably already admitted at a recent festival that he’d read it. And once he started talking about the movie itself, he went in on Reeves’ approach and why this feels special — not just capes-and-cars, but character-first.

• Farrell calls the sequel a work of contemporary genre brilliance.
• He says Reeves grinds on this stuff, puts a ton of pressure on himself, and understands what Batman means to generations of fans.
• He describes Reeves as both commercially minded and intellectually rigorous — a rare combo.
• Like the first film, Part II plays as straight-up entertainment and as a deep dive into Bruce Wayne/Batman’s psychology.
• Bottom line: reading it left Farrell very emotionally moved.

So, the vibe is: he’s exhausted by the eight-hour build, but he thinks Reeves has the goods again. If that balance holds — pain in the chair, payoff on screen — we might be in for something sharp and surprisingly affecting.