Joe Manganiello Discusses Cancelled Deathstroke Film Plot!
Once upon a time, Joe Manganiello was going to be the star in his very own Deathstroke movie. He was going to be the villain in Ben Affleck’s Batman movie, too. We know very little about what either of those movies would have looked like. A few details once trickled out about the Batman film. Now Manganiello is revealing some secrets about what could have been with the Deathstroke film. It sounds like it would have been a film based more in reality than the rest of the DC films. The now-canceled film was compared to the Jason Bourne trilogy. This all comes from a film that didn’t even have a script yet, according to Manganiello. Joe Manganiello discussed the cancelled Deathstroke film plot!
Manganiello spoke at Justice Con on Saturday, “I want to make it clear that it wasn’t a script yet, it was a treatment. It was an outline for how the story could go. Who were the characters involved? It involved Adeline [Kane], the kids, who were going to be young, Wintergreen, Talia [al Ghul]. n my script, there was an origin story for the sword and there were League of Shadows ties and things like that.”
The actor elaborated, “It was more of a Tom Clancy ripped from the headlines sort of story, or even like a Bourne Identity where it was going to be really grounded, and political with military drama as far as what it would take to go from devoting his life to his country for this life he believed in to, you know, having the rug pulled out from underneath him and being stabbed in the back and not knowing who to trust.”
That’s when the Deathstroke actor revealed the film would see Deathstroke cutting down the people in Washington DC who wronged him. His motives in the film would have been fueled by revenge, writing the wrongs they committed on him. The Deathstroke actor revealed that Warner Bros could still make the movie happen. It’s pretty obvious that he’s up for it. He’s posted hashtags and pretty much outright said it at this point.
This is what he told comicbook.com, “The studio was very much enthralled by all of the research that I was doing. I was starting to build the character out and pitch them ideas and I build a back story and kind of build. You know, because I think a lot of times the comic book stories of Deathstroke are very, very far-fetched. You know, they’re very superhero-ish. You know where Deathstroke’s holding a submarine over his head and throwing it, you know? And I wanted Deathstroke to be human and grounded and so I started with, you know, he was a part of the American military. OK, well what part? What branch? What would he have done? Where would have been, you know what did? What did his wife do? You know, and then of course, like the League of Shadows influence? And why does he carry a sword? And how do you learn how to use a sword? If you’re, you know, most military guys don’t mess around with katanas, it’s just not what they do. So that part of the story needed to build out. And so I was really grounding it and they really, you know they loved it. So I worked on that for six months.”
What do you think of the canceled Deathstroke film plot? Let us know in the comments!
You can catch Manganiello in Zack Snyder’s Justice League currently on HBO Max. And you should! It was a good movie.
Alexander is passionate about everything related to gaming, comics, television, and film. You can usually find him watching some kind of DC show and can also find his writing on Multiversal News, something he’s helping to build.
