Joe Manganiello Reveals Scrapped DCEU Plans for Deathstroke, From ‘Aquaman 2’ Villain to a Showdown With Deadshot
Few comic book actors have had a stranger run than Joe Manganiello. He was cast as one of DC’s most dangerous assassins, glimpsed the character for a few seconds on screen, and then watched project after project vanish. Now, with a new memoir to promote, he is opening up about just how many plans came and went.
While doing the rounds for his book ‘Bloodlines’, Manganiello has been reflecting on his health struggles and the disappointment of learning that Ben Affleck’s ‘Batman’ movie had been scrapped. In the process, he has revealed several ideas that were presented to him for Deathstroke in the DCEU. They include playing the villain of an ‘Aquaman’ sequel and facing off against Will Smith’s Deadshot in a ‘Suicide Squad’ follow-up.
Those details give a clearer picture of a character who was constantly on the verge of a bigger role. According to his account, a standalone Deathstroke movie was also discussed at various points. None of it made it to the screen.
Manganiello says that after ‘The Batman’ was canceled, he got to play the character again for only about 2 minutes during reshoots. For the next 6 years, he recalls, his agent kept getting calls with new possibilities. One idea had him as the villain in the ‘Aquaman’ sequel, another placed him in a ‘Suicide Squad’ sequel with one director and then another, and others pitched him against Deadshot or in a standalone film.
He asked whether that made him lucky or unlucky, and he answered himself with a bit of both. At the time, he felt cursed because every hopeful project disappeared. Looking back, though, he says he was lucky to get the part in the first place.
The role carried personal weight. He has said the offer to play Deathstroke arrived while he was recovering from a near-fatal illness, and that it gave him a reason to get better. According to an excerpt from his memoir, the part held a shred of hope that he might get his life back, and he has written that he hid his condition from Affleck and the crew.
In his recent comments, he credited the role with helping him regain his health, his weight and his ability to function. He keeps the helmet in his office and calls it the greatest accomplishment of his life. It is a striking way to look back on a character that never got a full showcase.
The timeline helps explain the frustration. In 2016, Manganiello was lined up for a major role in the DCEU, and in the post-credits scene of ‘Justice League’ his Deathstroke learns Batman’s secret identity from Lex Luthor, setting up a hunt for Bruce Wayne in Affleck’s version of ‘The Batman’. Then Affleck decided not to direct, and the project became the Matt Reeves film with Robert Pattinson.
A solo Deathstroke film with ‘The Raid’ director Gareth Evans was also in development. Manganiello has said the project fell away because it was not seen as a priority to make a $40 million villain origin story. He previously told Entertainment Tonight that once the Batman film was canceled, he wrote it off and thought it was over, which is why he shifted to working with the studio on an origin film.
Manganiello did get one more moment. He returned briefly as Deathstroke in ‘Zack Snyder’s Justice League’ in 2021, in a new apocalyptic sequence alongside Affleck’s Batman and Jared Leto’s Joker. That scene remains the closest fans have come to seeing the larger story that was originally planned.
He has also described the abandoned Batman plan as a dark one, with Deathstroke acting like a horror-movie villain who dismantles Bruce Wayne’s life from the inside. That version has become one of the great what-ifs in superhero filmmaking. It is also a reminder of how much of the DCEU’s story was left unwritten.
For fans, the new comments add detail to a familiar story of unrealized ideas. The notion of Deathstroke versus Deadshot, or a villain turn in an ‘Aquaman’ sequel, shows how many directions the studio was exploring. It also underscores how often those directions changed.
As for the future, there is nothing to suggest that Manganiello will be involved in DC Studios’ planned ‘Deathstroke and Bane’ movie. His tenure as the character appears to have ended where it began, as a tantalizing possibility. Still, his reflections suggest he has made peace with it, and that the experience mattered far more than the screen time.
Which scrapped Deathstroke project would you most want to see?
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