Ben Wan
- Dec 20, 2021
- 3 min read

Penguin Was Max Shreck's Brother?! The UNMADE Versions of The Penguin

It’s the 80th Anniversary of the Penguin and what better way to celebrate than to dive into the secret origins of Danny DeVito’s take from Batman Returns?! We cover the attempts to bring Penguin to BATMAN 1989 and early versions of him in “Batman II.” Then we cover the deleted backstory of Penguin being Max Shreck’s secret brother as well as the influence of DeVito’s Penguin on other versions.

Featuring the voice of Jackson Putnam as The Penguin in the opening. Big thanks to Jackson. (Fun fact: Jackson recorded this audio for us without knowing that we had an upcoming episode on The Penguin)

CHAPTERS:

0:00 Introduction

10:58 Penguin in Tom Mankiewicz's unmade The Batman script

We covered the Tom Mankiewicz script (and Burton and Hickson's treatment) here:

You can read the Mankiewicz script here: https://genius.com/Tom-mankiewicz-batman-revised-first-draft-annotated

We also cited an article (that Ben partially collaborated on) from Batman-Online.com on the comic book connections to Batman Returns: https://www.batman-online.com/features/2009/1/2/possible-influences-of-comics-on-tim-burtons-batman-returns

Tom Mankiewicz told Starlog Magazine that his dream cast was:

A well-known director has been approached, but his identity cannot be disclosed at this time. Also, nothing is definite yet regarding casting.

Mankiewicz, however, would prefer to see Jack Nicholson as the chalk-faced Joker, Peter O'Toole as the Penguin, David Niven as Alfred, and in the Christopher Reeve tradition, an unknown as The Batman.

You can find a record of it here:

https://archive.org/stream/starlog_magazine-069/069_djvu.txt

Joe Dante was likely the director mentioned since he confirmed later that he was involved and had wanted John Lithgow as Joker:

https://screencrush.com/dante-batman-lithgow/

Contrary to popular belief, this is NOT confirmed to be the same project where Bill Murray and Eddie Murphy were considered to be Batman and Robin, which seems to be a separate comedic take that was being considered.

26:27 Penguin in Tim Burton and Julie Hickon's unmade Batman script treatment

If you have a Scribd account, you can read the Burton-Hickson treatment here: https://www.scribd.com/document/437924384/Batman-1985-Treatment

28:49 Penguin in Sam Hamm's Batman 2 script

We covered Sam Hamm's Batman 2 script here:

You can read it yourself here: https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/batman-returns_unproduced.html

To represent the finale of Hamm's script, we showed fan art from our fan Logan Wood:

Check out his Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/shanehelms121/

42:48 Break Check out our link for Barkbox here.

43:41 Were There OTHER Actors Considered for Penguin?

This dubious list of Penguin actors come from Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Batman_Returns#Cast

Jackson Putnam brought up that other potential inspirations for The Penguin's makeup, other than Lon Chaney's London After Midnight character, were:

Edison's Frankenstein from the early film adaptation:

Dr. Caligari from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari:

And Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang:

53:03 Tucker and Esther Cobblepot

The concept art that was taken from a book comes once again from Batman: The Definitive History of The Dark Knight In Comics, Film, And Beyond by Andrew Farago and Gina McIntyre. You can get it here:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1683834372/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=superherost00-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&linkCode=as2&creativeASIN=1683834372&linkId=fdb5baea4e0fd22f94058d6e11b23a9f

55:45 Was The Penguin Max Shreck's Brother?

You can check out Daniel Waters's original draft of Returns, titled Batman II here:

https://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/batman-returns_early.html

57:46 Penguin in Daniel Waters's Batman 2 Script

The concept art of Penguin comes from the featurette, which you can see here:

The Fantazone article where Waters mentions Robin working for Penguin can be found here:

http://www.1989batman.com/2014/12/vintage-magazine-article-fantazone.html

Some other concept art comes from the DC Movie Wiki: https://dcmovies.fandom.com/wiki/Oswald_Cobblepot_(Burtonverse)

The concept art of Penguin addressing the penguins came from here:

https://propstore.com/mobile/product/batman-returns/penguin-danny-devito-pencil-storyboard-display/

Logan also provided us this amazing meme:

1:22:59 Was Penguin Actually Raised by Penguins?

1:25:38 Did Penguin Kill His Own Parents?

Did Penguin Kill His Own Parents?

1:32:51 DeVito's Influence on Other Penguins

The original Bruce Timm sketch of Penguin came from here, which was also taken from the Batman Animated book by Chip Kidd:

https://batmananimated.tumblr.com/post/74509246472/when-the-wb-network-demanded-that-the-penguin

1:41:37 Danny DeVito's 80th Anniversary Penguin Story

1:48:46 Last Thoughts on DeVito's Penguin

The comic to screen comparisons for Batman Returns also comes from the Batman-Online article, mainly the contributions by user Silver Nemesis:

https://www.batman-online.com/features/2009/1/2/possible-influences-of-comics-on-tim-burtons-batman-returns

1:55:44 Closing: Fan Comments & Social Media Promotion

BIG thanks to our research assistant Dan Yamat for providing the visuals for this YouTube experience, as well as providing QC and the chapter time codes.

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