The Batman changed The Penguin's name to the very serious sounding Oz Cobb because Matt Reeves felt it was more "grounded" than Oswald Cobblepot

Matt Reeves felt that The Penguin's real name, Oswald Cobblepot, was just a bit too silly, so he asked DC if he could change it.

The Penguin's civilian name has been the very extra Oswald Cobblepot for a good number of decades now, but in something as serious as 2022's The Batman, a name like that might seem a little out of place (though we can of course suspend our sense of disbelief at a man dressed up in bat-themed military gear). So, the character's name was changed to Oswald Cobb, or Oz Cobb, which definitely doesn't sound silly at all, and in a recent interview with SFX Magazine (via ComicBookMovie.com), producer Dylan Clark offered a bit of context as to why that decision was made.

"They never got around to changing [The Penguin's] name in the comics like they did with the Riddler, going from Edward Nigma to Edward Nashton, from an unreal name to a real name," Clark said. "By doing that they grounded the character.

"We had a lot of conversations with DC Comics and with Jim Lee [president, publisher and chief creative officer]. They had thought about changing his name at some point but had never done it. Matt asked, 'Can I call our character Oz Cobb?' And Jim said, 'Absolutely!' So we got a blessing from the king himself. That small change of the name allowed us to look at this character in a grounded way."

The Penguin writer and showrunner Lauren LeFranc offered her thoughts on Reeves' take on Batman, saying "Matt's created new canon in his film, and I'm creating new canon in this show. We have characters you're familiar with but there's a different spin on them. It felt like in the Gotham City that Matt created in his film, Cobblepott seemed less of a real person in the way that Cobb is a real last name. He's a gangster and it just kind of felt more correct."

More than two years after The Batman was released in cinemas, The Penguin series is finally releasing this Thursday on HBO, where it will then come to Max, and switch to a weekly Sunday release the following week.