Warner Bros. and DC Films finally appear to have settled on an approach to creating comic book blockbusters, but it’s taken a long time to get to this point. The focus now is to deliver movies that tie into the established DCEU mythology like The Flash, Aquaman 2 and Black Adam, alternated with standalone stories that don’t have any dots to connect, in the vein of Joker and The Batman.
That being said, the studio have still announced a lot more projects that were discarded than ones that either made it to the big screen or are heading that way in the near future. Casting an eye over the DCEU’s elephant graveyard and titles including Green Lantern Corps, Cyborg, Justice League Part 2, Deadshot, Joker and Harley Quinn, Lobo, Nightwing, Gotham City Sirens and more never made it very far, and one of the abandoned ideas with the most potential was Joe Manganiello’s Deathstroke.
A $40 million martial arts-influenced comic book adaptation set to be directed by The Raid‘s Gareth Evans that drew influence from South Korean action cinema sounds incredible on paper, but it fell apart as the top brass reworked the entire franchise from the ground up.
Manganiello will be back as Slade Wilson in Zack Snyder’s Justice League, though, and in a new interview, the actor was asked about a potential return after the hotly-anticipated HBO Max exclusive arrives. While he wouldn’t be drawn on specifics, he did hint that fans would be keen to see more of the character in the future.
“I think there’s going to be excitement over continuing what Zack was up to.”
While that’s hardly a confirmation or denial, the advent of HBO Max has at least slightly increased the chances of Deathstroke possibly seeing the light of day, especially when DC Films president Walter Hamada confirmed plans for at least two movies per year heading exclusively to streaming.