When Justice League was originally filmed, Joe Manganiello’s appearance as Deathstroke was meant to lead into The Batman. However, this version was not the film currently in production with Robert Pattinson as Batman. Instead, Ben Affleck co-wrote and planned direct the movie for his Batman before he ultimately stepped down from the role. Now, in a new interview with Yahoo! Entertainment, Manganiello shed some light on how Deathstroke would have been portrayed in Affleck’s abandoned Batman film.
“It was a really dark story in which Deathstroke was like a shark or a horror movie villain that was dismantling Bruce’s life from the inside out,” recalled Manganiello. “It was this systemic thing: He killed everyone close to Bruce and destroyed his life to try and make him suffer because he felt that Bruce was responsible for something that happened to him.”
Manganiello also noted that Deathstroke was targeting both sides of Bruce’s double life as a billionaire philanthropist and Gotham’s Dark Knight.
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“It was really cool, really dark and really hard,” added Manganiello. “I was very excited for it.”
According to Manganiello, his Justice League cameo originally set up that plotline. However, Joss Whedon’s reshoots changed some important aspects of Deathstroke’s debut.
“They reshot all of [Jesse Eisenberg’s] dialogue to tease Justice League Part 2, which was going to be about the Injustice League,” said Manganiello. “All of that dialogue was about Batman originally, and it was changed to lines like ‘Shouldn’t we have a league of our own?’”
Manganiello also acknowledged that he has filmed new scenes for Zack Snyder’s Justice League. That’s why he’s hoping for another chance to play Deathstroke in his own movie.
“We landed on an origin story that everyone I’ve ever pitched it to has gone crazy for,” noted Manganiello. “There’s been so many versions of this character over the years. And I just wanted to put my own stink on him.”
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