‘Deathstroke’: Gareth Evans discusses his plans for the DC movie that never was

The 'Justice League' character was set to be played by Joe Manganiello

Director Gareth Evans has revealed the plans he had for the shelved Deathstroke movie.

The origin story, for the character introduced at the climax of 2017’s Justice League, was all set to happen at Warner Bros, with Joe Manganiello to play the lead role.

After the box office failure of Justice League, and the DC Extended Universe largely severing ties with director Zack Snyder, plans for the Deathstroke movie were put on hold, and remain that way now.

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“I was actually quite enthused and excited about [Deathstroke] back in the day, when it was first pitched to me,” Evans told Yahoo.

“I met with them, and talked to them about it, and was certainly attached to it at a certain point.”

Zack Snyder
Justice League

Evans went on to say that he’s spoken to Manganiello about the shelved film, saying that they “both lamented the fact that it didn’t happen”.

Going on to discuss his plans for the movie, Evans added: “The plan was, I wanted to tell something that would be a lean story, that would be kind of an origin of that character. Something that felt like it could be 100 minutes or 110 minutes long, max – not to go over the two hour period with it.

“Back then, I was massively influenced by the noir films coming out of South Korea, so that was my pitch. I was like, these films are amazing: the texture, and the tones of colours, the grit and the aggression of them is super interesting to use to tell Deathstroke‘s story.”

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Going on to admit that he’s “not a massive comic book or superhero fan,” Evans said that “something about Deathstroke interested [him].

“I did some reading into it – not enough to make real hardcore fanboys happy – but I tried my best to consume as much as I could in the time that I was on it, for a bit.”

This month, it was announced that Star Wars director JJ Abrams is set to produce a TV series based on DC Comics’ Justice League Dark for streaming service HBO Max.

Meanwhile, Justice League fans (and stars) are still continuing the campaign to have the ‘Snyder Cut’ of the 2017 film released, containing the vision he had for the movie before he was removed from the director’s chair, with Snyder himself confirming the existence of the alternate version.

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