“Magic Mike” and “True Blood” actor Joe Manganiello has spoken some more about the scrapped plans for his villain character Deathstroke in Zack Snyder’s now defunct DC Extended Universe.
Manganiello briefly took on the role for Snyder’s “Justice League” in the post-credits sequence and reprised it for scenes in the 2021 director’s cut. The brief tease of his character was to come before serving as the main villain of the Ben Affleck-directed Batman film.
That project collapsed during development, but the actor was rumored to be returning in various DCEU projects – rumors that never panned out. Ultimately the DCEU was canned with the Gunn-Safran DCU taking over.
In a conversation with Rich Roll while promoting his new book “Bloodlines,” Manganiello talked about the multiple near misses:
“Batman got cancelled and I never… I mean I got to play the character again for like two minutes in the re-shoots… and for the next six years there were just project after project and call for my agent after call for my agent about, ‘Oh yeah, they’re going to use your character in this. You’re going to be in this.
You’re going to be the villain in Aquaman 2. You’re going to be in Suicide Squad 2 with this director. No, this director. No, you versus Will Smith. Oh, it’s going to be a standalone.’
Am I lucky or unlucky? I’m lucky that I got that part, but at the time I felt like I was unlucky because I got this thing that then got cancelled and went away.”
Sadly Manganiello never got to explore the Slade Wilson character, but the role is getting a new actor for an upcoming film that will pit him with Batman villain Bane. Manganiello will appear next year as Mr. 0/Sir Crocodile, leader of Baroque Works, who is the primary villain of the third season of Netflix’s live-action “One Piece” series.
