Cristin Milioti claims he hasn’t given much thought to the possibility of a second season of Penguins.
“Every time I get asked[about Season 2]I’m like, ‘Sign it!’ so I feel like I’m totally fine with it,” Milioti, who won an Emmy for his work on the DC Comics show, told me while promoting his new Netflix animated film, In Your Dreams. “I love[series creator]Lauren[Lefranc]. I love the whole cast. It’s a really great group.”
Colin Farrell, director of The Penguin, has consistently insisted that he is in no rush to air the second installment of the series. “I don’t want that. I don’t want that,” he told me at the SAG Awards in February. “We all left it in the ring during those eight hours. … So I’m in no hurry. There’s no deep desire to do it.”
However, in July, after the Emmy nominations were announced, HBO and Max boss Casey Bloys told Variety’s Michael Schneider that LeFranc and executive producer Matt Reeves had discussed a second season. Reeves acknowledged the conversation at the Emmys, but his priority now is directing the second Batman movie, in which he co-stars with Robert Pattinson.
“In Your Dreams” follows two young siblings grappling with a divorce by encountering the mythical Sandman in a dream and asking him to help keep their parents (Milioti and Simu Liu) together as they move toward separation.
Milioti first read the script in 2021. “It was really moving to think about how we deal with hardship and how sometimes we want things to be different and how we get through it,” she said.
While marriage issues may seem too serious for a family film, Milioti points to other animated films that tackle deeper themes.
“If you look back at Disney movies like ‘The Lion King,’ it’s ‘Hamlet.’ And ‘Bambi’? Forget about it,” Milioti said. “That’s one of the most special things about this movie, and about animation. It starts to have these subtle conversations with kids: ‘This can be really difficult and scary. It can feel like your world is collapsing and changing, but it’s not as scary as you think.'”
“In Your Dreams” is available on Netflix.
