Last year, when Ben Affleck was set to write and direct as well as star in a Batman solo feature film for Warner Brothers, it was announced that Joe Manganiello would be playing the villain of the piece, Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke. However, when Affleck scaled back his participation in the project to just starring and Matt Reeves stepped in to write and direct, many wondered what would happen to Manganiello’s participation in the project and if we would ever see him in the role of the fan favorite villain.
Well fans will be getting to see Manganiello’s version of Deathstroke after all. The Wrap is reporting that Manganiello is attached to a spinoff film that will serve as a solo oiting for the anti-hero. Furthermore Gareth Evans, the director of the popular action film The Raid: Redemption is in talks to direct.
Initially Evans had met with Warner Brothers and DC Entertainment brass about possibly directing their planned Justice League Dark film which would feature a number of DC Comics’s supernatural based superheroes teaming up to stop a world-ending threat. While he didn’t get that job, the execs were excited enough by a pitch from him for a Deathstroke film, that they opened up talks.
If you you have seen The Raid, then you may be thinking that Evans is a promising choice for this project. If you haven’t seen The Raid, you should know that it is a kinetic, hard-hitting action film and if Evans brings the same sensibility to Deathstroke we should be in for a good time.
I do want to urge caution. Warners has a number of potential films in development for their DC Extended Universe franchise and I don’t think that all of them will necessarily make it to the big screen. But this is definitely one I will be rooting for to make it out of development and in front of cameras.
Deathstroke first appeared in comics back in 1980’s New Teen Titans #2. Created by George Perez and Marv Wolfman, the character proved to be so popular with fans that he long outlived the one story arc he was initially conceived for.
Although this will be the character’s big screen debut, he has been making sporadic appearances over the run of the Green Arrow TV show Arrow on the CW.
Affleck teased Mamganiello’s involvement with his planned Batman film a little over a year ago with this tweet.
— Ben Affleck (@BenAffleck) August 29, 2016
