Joe Manganiello Teases Plot Details for Ben Affleck’s Scrapped BATMAN Film

By: John M Jerva

Once upon a time, Ben Affleck was readying to not only star in a solo Batman outing but he was writing the movie and helming it as well. Then Affleck stepped down from the project and playing Batman saying that he just couldn’t crack it so instead of stressing over it, he decided to let someone else take a shot.

We don’t know much about the scrapped movie but we do know that Joe Manganiello was also set to star as Slade Wilson AKA Deathstroke and the two were supposed to have a battle for the ages in the movie. There was also test footage shot of Manganiello dressed in full Deathstroke armor that took the internet by storm and fans were excited to say the least.

We’ve always wondered about what could have been but Manganiello is giving us just a little sampling of what we were in for.

Manganiello is doing the press rounds for his newest dark superhero flick called Archenemy and in a recent interview with Yahoo.com, the star shedded some light on what the solo Batman film woul be about and it sounded glorious to say the least. The movie would have had Deathstroke tearing up Bruce Wayne’s world from within leading up to the inevitable clash of Titans.

“It was a really dark story in which Deathstroke was like a shark or a horror movie villain that was dismantling Bruce’s life from the inside out. It was this systemic thing: He killed everyone close to Bruce and destroyed his life to try and make him suffer because he felt that Bruce was responsible for something that happened to him.”

Manganiello as Deathstroke in ***Justice League***

Manganiello did appear in the stinger scene for Justice League but mentioned that the dialogue between him and Jesse Eisenberg was changed from the two discussing what to do to the Dark Knight which would have set up the solo film to the inevitable Justice League 2 tease that Joss Whedon did when he came on board.

They reshot all of Jesse’s dialogue to tease Justice League Part 2, which was going to be about the Injustice League. All of that dialogue was about Batman originally, and it was changed to lines like ‘Shouldn’t we have a league of our own?’

Now it’s known that the original post credits scene is supposed to be restored in Zack Snyder’s version of Justice League and Snyder invited Manganiello in for reshoots as well.

“Zack called me one day and asked, ‘How’d you like to do it again?'” Manganiello said. “So I said, ‘Sure, man, I’ll be there.’ And he told me, ‘OK, we’re getting your armor out of storage in England, and we’re going to fly it over here. Is there anything you want to do differently?'”

Manganiello did make one small change to his Deathstroke look and that was his hair which he will be sporting a rad new Mohawk look when fans see him in Snyder’s version. Manganiello, of course, had a very special reasoning for the new look.

“The greatest warriors are the ones who walk into battle already dead or assuming that they’re going to die,” Manganiello said. “They’re looking for someone who could actually kill them. There’s almost an excitement around that, like ‘Is today going to be the day?’ So there was a climatic moment in my standalone story where I wanted Slade to shave his head into this war-like Mohawk knowing that he was going off to his own death. I said to Zack, ‘I always envisioned him with a big white Mohawk,’ and he was totally down for it.”

Hopefully, this all reaps success and we will get the showdown that we’ve always wanted between The Dark Knight and The Terminator. Zack Snyder’s Justice League is expected to hit HBOMAX next year and some are saying that it could hit in a few months.

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