Once upon a time, actor Joe Manganiello was poised to have a rather large footprint in the DCEU as Slade Wilson, aka Deathstroke, after showing up at the end of “Justice League” with a post-credit scene alongside Jesse Eisenberg‘s Lex Luthor seemingly teasing the assembling of a cinematic version of the Legion of Doom for future installments. But then we all know what happened next, as “Justice League” fizzled and made Warner Bros. question its entire DC films slate.
In a new interview with Coming Soon, Manganiello was asked if he was optimistic about returning to the Deathstroke role in-depth at some point after briefly reprising him for new scenes in the Zack Snyder cut of “Justice League.” The actor gave a short, honest answer and said, “No, I let that go a while ago.”
In addition to the “Justice League” tease, Deathstroke was rumored to be part of James Gunn‘s “The Suicide Squad“ at one point. There was also development on two other major feature films that would have focused on the the character with Ben Affleck‘s “Batman” film set in Arkham Asylum that was nixed for the anticipated reboot from Matt Reeves (“Dawn of The Planet of Apes“) and Gareth Evans‘ (“The Raid“) solo Deathstroke pic that also fizzled-out.
This might be a bit disappointing for fans that had been holding out hope that Warner Bros. would attempt to flesh out more characters from the Snyderverse corner of the DCEU but that doesn’t seem to be the plan.
Deathstroke has long been a fan-favorite antagonist in the comics and fans still had held out hope he’d show up eventually in a bigger role in feature films. It’s unknown if the studio would ever circle back to those two film projects or attempt to insert the character in a hypothetical “Suicide Squad 3” for the future but it doesn’t sound like Joe Manganiello thinks it’ll happen.