Deathstroke was to appear in 3-4 DCEU projects most interestingly in Suicide Squad 2
Die-Hard fans of the DCEU are very familiar with the concept of cancelled and unfinished projects due to so many of the initial projects from the slate, like, The Batman, Cyborg, Green Lantern, and many other films never going past the pre-production stage. Recently, actor Joe Manganiello revealed he was scheduled to appear as the iconic Batman villain Deathstroke almost 3-4 times in various projects but none of them ever saw the light of day, except Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Watch: Lex Luthor & Deathstroke | Justice League
All The Deathstroke Cameos
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter Manganiello said that he was originally scheduled to debut in Ben Affleck’s The Batman solo movie in 2018, which was eventually canceled.
His only appearance so far was in the post-credits of the 2017 Justice League, in which it was shown that Deathstroke will team up with Superman villain Lex Luthor. Together they’d form the Injustice League to go against the Justice League in the sequel. But even that project was cancelled due to the horrible performance of the 2017 version.
“Then they re-did the end credits sequence to tease a Justice League 2 Injustice League for the bad guys that didn’t happen, clearly,” recalled the actor.
He further revealed that he had made his own version of an origin story for the character and convinced director Gareth Evans to sign on for the project. He pitched this as a 40–50-million-dollar project which will serve as a backstory for the villain and whose runtime will be close to two hours.
But when the WB Executives changed in 2017, the new bosses didn’t think that a villain origin story movie was a priority, so they cancelled the project.
Furthermore Manganiello revealed that he was in the running to appear in the sequel to David Ayer’s antihero movie Suicide Squad. But that didn’t happen when James Gunn decided to go in a different direction.
There were four or five different versions of Suicide Squad 2 that I was put on hold for, for dates, waiting for one actor to free up and we were going to go.
Joe Manganiello
Deathstroke In Zack Snyder’s Justice League
Now fans will finally see the Batman villain come to life as intended by Snyder when his version of Justice League drops. Joe even had creative input on how Deathstroke will look like in the Knightmare timeline; in which Bruce Wayne gets glimpses of what will Darkseid do in the event of Apokolips.
“At the end of the film, I always envisioned him shaving his head into some kind of warlike, borderline suicide mission. This is it, I’m going to die like a warrior,'” said the actor, making an electric razor sound. “I explained that to Zack, and he said, ‘Great, let’s do it.'”
The DC villain has taken the actor on a rollercoaster journey, and Manganiello won’t rule out Deathstroke being his future. Said the actor: “I think there’s going to be excited over continuing what Zack was up to.”
Zack Snyder’s Justice League drops on 18th March on HBO Max. Indian viewers can watch the movie on Book My Show’s streaming service.
