HBO Bets The Penguin’s Lauren LeFranc on Poison Ivy

Lauren LeFranc is in talks to produce an HBO Poison Ivy series, people familiar with the project said on Oct. 21, 2026. She would produce it, not write it. No writers are attached, no one has been cast, and the show would sit outside Matt Reeves’ Batman films.

HBO is putting the producer who made a Batman villain work as crime drama onto a character who has never carried live-action, then asking her to produce someone else’s scripts in a different Gotham.

Producer Only, and Still No Writers Attached

The talks, described by people close to the project, put LeFranc on a Poison Ivy series from Warner Bros. and DC Comics. If HBO picks it up, that is where it would land. It has not been ordered. HBO declined to comment.

The credit on the table is producer. LeFranc would not write the expansion of Dr. Pamela Isley’s story, and no writers are on the file. That is a different job from the one she did on The Penguin, where she was writer, showrunner, and executive producer.

In August 2025 she signed a two-year overall deal with HBO and HBO Max and launched Acid and Tender Productions. The banner already sits in The Penguin’s Emmy credits. The Ivy talks fit that deal. They do not fill a writers’ room.

I came up in writers rooms and when they’re working, there’s nothing better. My hope is for Acid and Tender to become that kind of haven for writers and filmmakers who seek to tell authentic, off-kilter, character-driven stories, no matter the genre.

Lauren LeFranc, producer, announcing Acid and Tender Productions

She said that while selling a company built around rooms. The Poison Ivy file, as of Oct. 21, 2026, has none.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The credit: LeFranc is in talks to produce the series and not to write it.
• The buyer: The show would go to HBO if it is picked up; it has no series order.
• The map: It would not be part of Matt Reeves’ Batman films with Robert Pattinson.
• The pause: Plans sat idle for months during the Paramount and Warner Bros. merger.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The page: No writers are attached, and none have been named.
• The lead: No actor has been cast as Pamela Isley.
• The DCU: No one has said whether the series would share a world with James Gunn’s DC Studios films.

Aggregator posts still call her the Penguin showrunner circling Ivy. The actual offer is a producer’s name on an unwritten show. That is the wager, and it is smaller than the headline.

The Penguin Gave HBO a Villain That Grew

HBO has a reason to keep LeFranc close. The Penguin, an eight-episode HBO limited series from DC Studios, premiered on Sept. 19, 2024, and kept adding viewers through its Nov. 10, 2024 finale. It continues the crime story Reeves began with The Batman, with Colin Farrell back as Oz Cobb.

Warner Bros. Discovery said the finale drew 2.1 million U.S. viewers across HBO and Max on the night it aired, a series high, up 10% from the 1.9 million for the penultimate hour and up 50% from debut night. Episode 1 had amassed 17 million U.S. viewers by then. The premiere reached 10.4 million cross-platform viewers in 11 days. Globally, it was the third most-watched HBO or Max debut season, behind House of the Dragon and The Last of Us.

THE PENGUIN’S HBO RUN

The Television Academy lists 24 Emmy nominations and nine wins for the 2025 cycle. Cristin Milioti won Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie as Sofia Falcone. Farrell was nominated for lead actor. The show did not win Limited Series. After that night, Milioti called LeFranc “the reason our show is so special.”

HBO has not ordered a second season. Reeves, LeFranc, and Farrell have said they would only return with a story that earned it. The Ivy talks are not that sequel. They are a new file with her name on the producer’s line.

Why This Poison Ivy Show Leaves Reeves’ Gotham

The Penguin worked because it borrowed a city, a crime boss, and a movie audience. Farrell’s Oz Cobb was already on screen in The Batman, which took in $722 million worldwide in 2022. Reeves executive produced the series. Viewers did not have to be sold on the world.

People familiar with the Ivy project say it would not be part of that universe. No Pattinson. No Oz Cobb. No shared Gotham with the films. LeFranc would be producing a Pamela Isley who does not have to match Farrell’s crime saga, and who also cannot lean on it.

That split is the cost of making Ivy her own lead. It is also the hole in the bet. Penguin’s ratings sat on a movie. Ivy would have to introduce a botanist who controls plants and people, without that on-ramp, and without LeFranc on the script.

Gunn’s DC Studios slate is a third map, with Clayface already in theaters’ path. Nobody on the Ivy file has said which, if any, of those worlds this series would join. Continuity arguments are running ahead of a writers’ hire.

After Skydance Closed, the Ivy Freeze Lifted

The project was not new on Oct. 21. People tracking it said plans had been on pause for months because of the Paramount and Warner Bros. merger. The combined company closed on Oct. 6, 2026, 15 days before the LeFranc talks became public.

Paramount completed a $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery and named the company Skydance. James Gunn and Peter Safran remain atop DC Studios. Casey Bloys is in the streaming chair. The first visible move on this Ivy file after that close is a producer negotiation, not a pickup.

THE PATH OUT OF THE FREEZE

1. June 2026: The U.S. Department of Justice clears the Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger.
2. September 2026: The merging parties settle litigation with state attorneys general.
3. October 6, 2026: The deal closes and the combined company takes the Skydance name.
4. October 21, 2026: LeFranc is in talks to produce the Poison Ivy series that had sat on pause.

A freeze that long usually kills weak development. This one survived long enough to get LeFranc’s name on it. Survival is not a room, a cast, or a slot on the HBO schedule.

Pamela Isley Has Never Headlined Live-Action

Carmine Infantino and Robert Kanigher created Poison Ivy for Batman #181, cover-dated June 1966. DC later billed her as Batman’s floral femme fatale: Dr. Pamela Isley, who uses pheromones to control people and commands the plants around her.

She has never fronted her own live-action series or film. Uma Thurman played her in 1997’s Batman & Robin. Clare Foley, Maggie Geha, and Peyton List played versions of her on Gotham. Bridget Regan played her on Batwoman. Lake Bell voices her on the adult animated Harley Quinn series, which is how a lot of viewers now know the character.

IVY ON SCREEN, NEVER AS THE TITLE

• 1966: Debuts in Batman #181 as a new female rogue built to stand with Catwoman.
• 1997: Thurman plays her in Batman & Robin, still the main live-action image.
• Gotham and Batwoman: Split across younger and adult takes, always in someone else’s series.
• Harley Quinn: Bell’s animated Ivy is the current popular version, still a co-lead at most.

Comics already gave her the starring run live-action never did. G. Willow Wilson’s Poison Ivy, launched in 2022, is the character’s first solo ongoing comic series. DC’s own pitch for The Virtuous Cycle is blunt: “Pamela Isley is out to save the world, even if it means killing every human being on the planet.” A later stretch, Origin of Species, is sold as the origin story told in her own words, with undergrad Pamela on a collision course with Dr. Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man.

That Ivy murders bystanders in one scene and tends a garden in the next. A live-action series that sanded her down into a stylish eco-criminal would be easier to shoot. It would also be a different character from the one DC has been publishing.

Plant Control Is Already the Fight

The argument around the talks is already about powers, not about who produces. One camp wants vines, pheromones, and a woman at war with the human race. The other wants another grounded Gotham crime story, because that is what The Penguin proved HBO will spend money on.

Those are not the same show. Penguin could hide in prosthetics and city politics. Ivy’s whole design is botanical. Strip the flora and she is a botanist with a grudge. Keep the flora and the series has to show a woman running plant life on an HBO budget, in a world that is not Reeves’ rain-soaked crime picture and may not be Gunn’s either.

THREE FIGHTS WITH NO WRITER YET

• The body: Whether Pamela Isley controls plants on camera or plays as a human eco-criminal in a greenhouse.
• The city: Whether this Gotham is new, tied to Gunn’s films, or left undefined until a room exists.
• The voice: Whether LeFranc’s producer credit means she shapes tone, or just that HBO parked a hit name on the file.

Fan casting is already louder than the development process, which is how these stories go when there is no script to argue with. The useful pressure is simpler. If the series is Ivy, the plants have to do something. If it is Penguin in a different wig, LeFranc’s name is doing work the pages are not.

Clayface Opens While Batman Part II Waits

James Watkins’ Clayface arrives in theaters on Oct. 23, 2026, another Batman villain pushed out in front of Batman himself. Reeves’ The Batman Part II is dated Feb. 18, 2028, and that production is paused. The next Pattinson film is more than a year away. The villains are not waiting.

That calendar is why a producer-only Ivy file still moves people. Penguin showed a DC rogue could hold an HBO night without the caped lead in the room. Clayface tests the idea on a movie screen the next day. Poison Ivy is the TV version with no writer, no cast, and no shared city with the show that made LeFranc’s name.

The bet on her halo is real. The series is not, not yet. HBO has the producer talks, a freeze that lifted after Skydance closed, and a character who has been waiting since 1966 to be the title. The pages are still blank.