Cristin Milioti’s big break couldn’t get any bigger than this. The actress who shot to fame with her role in How I Met Your Mother has now been cast as the prolific criminal mastermind Sofia Falcone who will serve as the primary villain of the limited series, The Penguin. With Matt Reeves finding a solid footing among acclaimed directors with his bold and dark The Batman, DC has swiftly followed up on the success of his first film with the Colin Farrell starring spin-off project, on the commission of HBO Max.
Cristin Milioti to Suit Up as Villainess For The Penguin
The Modern Love star, Cristin Milioti is known for her one too many niche and eccentric roles that somehow, despite their limited screen time, end up being absolute fan favorites. This time, however, the actress finds a project more worthy of her extended and central presence in HBO Max’s limited series production of The Penguin, the spin-off to 2022’s blockbuster movie, The Batman. Milioti will step into the fray as Sofia Falcone, daughter of Carmine Falcone, who played a major part in the unfolding of the film’s explosive events.
Cristin Milioti’s role as Sofia Falcone is rumored to go up against Colin Farrell‘s Penguin as the two fight for control over Gotham City in the aftermath of the chaos and lawlessness left in the wake of Carmine Falcone’s death and the vacuum of power left in consequence. The original drama series will find Colin Farrell returning after his unrecognizable and acclaimed delivery as the nightclub-owning crime lord, Penguin.
Set in the aftermath of the events of The Batman, the series will serve as an expansion of Reeves’s world before Robert Pattinson‘s Batman can return to the screens with higher stakes in the future.
Sofia Falcone & Her Integral Role in the Penguin’s Story
The daughter of crime lord Carmine Falcone, Sofia Falcone goes on to hone a reputation of her own beyond the overbearing shadow of her father’s extensive bad rep. She has been associated with the Batman villain subgenre and remains one of its primary proponents due to her ruthlessness and devious manipulations. Created by Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, the character first appeared in Batman: The Long Halloween #6 in 1996 and later more extensively in Batman: Dark Victory #1 in 1999 where she transformed into The Hangman to avenge her father’s death, an arc that can likely be explored in the HBO Max limited series.
In the live-action adaptation of the character, Sofia Falcone debuted on television on the Fox crime drama Gotham and was portrayed by Crystal Reed. The series explored the Falcone villainess’s elaborate puppeteering and orchestration of events and people around her that ends up leading them on a path toward their own downfall. One of the major pawns in her story is Oswald Cobblepot, who also goes by the alias Penguin in the criminal underbelly of Gotham City.
However, given the cinematic Gotham of Matt Reeves is built on a completely different structure and follows a much younger and formative city still awaiting the fulfillment of its criminal potential, Sofia Falcone’s story will serve as an interesting narrative arc that can be explored in all its new and endless possibilities.
Source: Deadline
