The Batman spinoff series The Penguin pauses filming due to WGA Strike

The ongoing WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike has caused the suspension of another major production. The Batman spinoff series The Penguin has Colin Farrell reprising the role of the iconic Bat-villain. WGA successfully convinced Warner Brothers Discovery's DC series The Penguin to halt production until a fair deal is reached with the writers. Scheduled to film in Westchester, New York, on Tuesday but it faced a strong early arrival of the WGA East, as reported by Deadline. Like other productions in the past week, including Stranger Things on Netflix, Teamsters, and local guilds have chosen not to cross the picket line.

Meanwhile, the WGA strike has also halted productions of TV shows like The Last of Us (season 2), Severance (season 2), Stranger Things (season 5), and movies like MCU's Blade.

What is 2023 WGA strike?

The writers' strike is a result of the content boom thanks, mainly, to the proliferation of streaming services. With Netflix and Amazon Prime Video and other streamers emerging as key players, the space is suddenly crowded, with every major studio jumping on the bandwagon. The wealth of content has led to an increase in the number of series and films that are annually made, leading to more job opportunities for writers.

However, this has come at a cost, with writers claiming they are making less than they used to, while working under more strained conditions. As such, the WGA is seeking more compensation for writers upfront, since many of the payments writers have historically profited from on the back end, like syndication and international licensing, have been largely phased out by the onset of streaming.

What is The Penguin TV series?

Farrell first played the role of PenguinMatt Reeves' The Batman. Slathered with layers and layers of makeup and prosthetics, the Irish actor looked nothing like his real self. Nevertheless, his performance in the movie as the iconic Batman villain was widely praised. And Farrell is all set to headline his own spinoff series.

Farrell spoke to Collider about the series last year and described it with adjectives like "tasty" and "unusual". He said, "Shooting here in New York. I think if it goes ahead, I read the first episode, which is just so tasty and so unusual as the character was on the page and what Matt Reeves kind of envisioned when he was thinking of this iteration of the bang up of Oz. So yeah, it’ll be, I think six or eight hours. I’m supposed to read episode two and three within the next week.

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