What exactly is James Gunn’s plan for DC Studios? Honestly, it’s anyone’s guess. From the outside, the slate has started to feel increasingly random, though maybe that’s just because the big picture hasn’t fully come into focus yet. Either way, the studio’s strangest Batman-adjacent gamble may have found its filmmaker. Greg Mottola, best known for “Superbad,” “Adventureland,” “The Daytrippers,” and “Confess, Fletch,” is reportedly the frontrunner to direct DC Studios’ untitled “Deathstroke & Bane” movie. This still-developing project would put two of DC’s most physically imposing villains under the same roof.
READ MORE: DC Studios Making A Batman Villains Team-Up Featuring Bane and Deathstroke
Per Deadline, no deal is in place yet, and other filmmakers are still in the mix. The project also remains early, with no completed script reportedly turned in. Still, Mottola is a surprising name for the material, given that his best-known films are rooted in comedy, awkward human behavior, and bruised character dynamics rather than comic-book spectacle —not exactly the obvious résumé for a movie about a masked brute and a super-assassin
Then again, Mottola is already in Gunn’s DC orbit. He directed episodes of “Peacemaker,” the HBO Max series that helped establish Gunn’s taste for violent comic-book absurdity before he took over DC Studios with Peter Safran. That connection makes the choice easier to understand, even if the project itself remains one of the stranger items in the company’s development pile.
The “Deathstroke & Bane” movie first surfaced in 2024, with Matthew Orton attached to write the screenplay. Orton’s credits include Marvel’s “Moon Knight” and “Captain America: Brave New World,” making this another case of modern superhero Hollywood pulling from the same small pool of franchise-tested writers.
Plot details are under wraps, which leaves the real question hanging over the project: what is this movie supposed to be? A two-villain team-up? A Gotham underworld thriller? DC’s first comedic villain buddy comedy? All of it is currently unknown.
The Deathstroke part is especially loaded. Joe Manganiello briefly appeared as Slade Wilson in “Justice League” and “Zack Snyder’s Justice League,” with that version once positioned for a larger role in the old DC universe before those plans collapsed. Bane, meanwhile, last hit the big screen through Tom Hardy’s turn in Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight Rises.”
That gives this project a strange bit of inherited baggage: one villain tied to a famously abandoned DC future, another tied to the end of Nolan’s Batman run, now potentially being paired inside Gunn and Peter Safran’s still-forming DCU. Mottola is not the obvious choice for that material, which may be the most interesting thing about the news.
For now, “Deathstroke & Bane” remains in development, with no release date set. Gunn’s larger DC plan may eventually make sense from a distance.
