Diksha Sundriyal
Set after the events of Matt Reeves’ ‘The Batman,’ HBO’s ‘The Penguin’ follows the rise of Oz Cobb, aka the Penguin. With Carmine Falcone out of the equation, new players rise, and old players return to the criminal underbelly of Gotham while the titular villain tries to carve a place for himself. The show picks up on some of the threads left loose by the movie, one of which is the Iceberg Lounge. The nightclub located on Gotham’s East Side is a prominent location in the movie, and ‘The Penguin’ continues to build upon the history of the place but in a very different manner.
The Fictional Iceberg Lounge is Brought to Life by Real Locations
While the Iceberg Lounge from the movie and the show are the same, it is filmed in separate locations for the two projects. The crew traveled to the other side of the pond to film the movie, with the Iceberg Lounge being created in London’s iconic Printworks Nightclub on Surrey Quays Road in Rotherhithe and interiors filmed on set. The show, however, is filmed around New York, with the exteriors of the nightclub recreated on location under the Riverside Drive Viaduct in New York. Interestingly, there was a real Iceberg Lounge at Park Row in London. Described as a “modern Japanese restaurant & bar set in an art-deco, Gotham City-inspired venue with live music,” the place is now permanently closed.
In the show, the Iceberg Lounge is completely destroyed, which renders it less meaningful in the context of the bigger things going on in the story. While several characters, including the Penguin, return to the place a couple of times, the nightclub doesn’t have the same vigor as it did in the film before the Riddler’s actions destroyed it. Because it is such a powerful presence in the movie, the filmmakers were keen on giving the place its own character, and Printworks Nightclub allowed them that freedom.
Printworks Nightclub was Perfect Location for the Iceberg Lounge
Originally opened in 2017, Printworks “comprises 6 acres of private, gated land, with seven event spaces arranged over multiple levels with a maze of corridors and office space,” with a further 1000 sq.m of outdoor space additionally available. The “10,000 sq.m of versatile, industrial event space” has hosted artists like the Chemical Brothers, Deadmau5, and Aphex Twin, with reportedly 2.5 million visitors over the span of six years. The place was closed down in May 2023 following a massive regeneration plan put in motion, which would see the entire location rebuilt into luxury flats, restaurants, offices, and shops by developers British Land and AustralianSuper. However, this doesn’t mean that the nightclub is gone for good. Considering the cultural impact of the place, it has been said to have been included in the redevelopment plans and is expected to reopen sometime in 2026.
What once served as the printing press for the likes of the Daily Mail and Evening Standard was turned into the gritty nightclub hosting the worst of the worst of Gotham’s seedy underworld by ‘The Batman’ production designer, James Chinlund. In conversation with The Illuminerdi, he talked about approaching the nightclub as “one of the biggest puzzles of the film.” He said: “It’s the center of the design of the film. And I knew we wanted to be near the sea wall because that was something that we really needed to explain to the audience without seeing it, so that led us to thinking about a bridge. And I’d been to a party on the Brooklyn Bridge as a younger person and it just seemed like a great place to start building. And so we sort of unpacked it from there.”
Building upon the vision of the director, Matt Reeves, Chinlund and the film’s crew morphed the vast space of Printworks into several levels of the Iceberg Lounge. They employed everything, from the vast space provided by the Press Halls to the narrow balconies, leading Batman and the audience with him through one level after another before he finds the Penguin. The HBO series keeps the soul of the place, even if filming it in a different place, but presents its own twist.
Read More: Where is HBO’s The Penguin Filmed?
