Out on the promotional circuit for his new Sky Atlantic series “Gangs of London,” filmmaker Gareth Evans (“The Raid,” “Apostle”) spoke with Yahoo Movies UK and discussed his brief fling with the DC film universe.
In 2017, Evans became attached to direct a film about DC Comics baddie Deathstroke (aka. Slade Wilson). The project was to star “Magic Mike” actor Joe Manganiello as the mercenary character and was tied to the existing ‘Snyder-verse’ films. Manganiello briefly played the role in the post-credits sequence of 2017’s “Justice League”.
The “Deathstroke” film, however, never materialised whilst the extended DC universe film plans were abandoned in favor of solo films driven by more auteur voices. Asked why it hasn’t been made, Evans told the outlet:
“I was actually quite enthused and excited about [Deathstroke] back in the day, when it was first pitched to me. I met with them, and talked to them about it, and was certainly attached to it at a certain point. I’ve spoken to Joe Manganiello, who was attached to star as Deathstroke. I spoke to him a while back, and we both lamented the fact that it didn’t happen. But yeah, I don’t really have much more than that, in terms of anything lately on it.”
While the film may be dead, Evans happy to open up a bit about his planned approach to the film and the comics material:
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.”
The Welsh filmmaker is best known for the two “The Raid” films and was also attached to the action film “Blister” which collapsed after 18 months of development.
