Joe Manganiello Talks Deathstroke, How He Would’ve Fit Into the DCEU

Everyone that stayed all the way through the credits of Justice League last fall got their collective dicks knocked in the dirt when a stinger scene appeared to set up the Injustice League. The great irony of this setup, however, is that it we'd spent the previous hour and fifty five minutes watching the franchise collapse into a pile of apathy.

Inarguably the greatest victim of this whole ordeal is Joe Manganiello, who was cast as legendary Batman villain Deathstroke—legendary to any comic book fans who grew up in the Wolfman/Perez era. Though I would caution you on feeling bad for him, as he will cry himself to sleep tonight on Sofia Vergara's gigantic breasts.

Manganiello was the belle of the ball for all of four or five months, preparing for his role as the antagonist in the Ben Affleck-directed Batman solo flick that was sure to happen. Then Affleck decided not to direct the film. New writers came in and chucked Manganiello's Slade Wilson into the trasj, and all hope of ever seeing the actor show up in costume on screen was dashed.

Until he showed up in the Justice League end credits stinger, and everyone just got super confused. Was Manganiello on retainer with DC? Was he still going to get the chance to actually suit up for one of those DC movies? The actor finally opened up about the whole ordeal while appearing on Chris Hardwick's ID10T podcast.

It sounds like the dude put in a ton of work for what will likely amount to that brief cameo in Justice League that most of the audience missed...

When I met with Ben Affleck about Batman the meeting we were having was for Deathstroke. This is a real opportunity to figure out who this guy is on the inside. Like what he’s battling with. The best quote unquote — I hate calling them this but you know calling them a villain is understanding where they’re coming from.

There are villains who are the people who are opposing them but from the inside this is a person who is struggling with all types of things. I think it’s really interesting to tell that kind of a story and tell the truth emotionally of a story like that when you’re talking about a man who lost an eye, was betrayed, lost a son. These different types of aspects.

Then you couple that with real world military training. Then I started training at like a Ninjutsu dojo and started learning sword fighting. Started learning and understanding where those techniques come from. All the sudden this thing starts writing itself.

Except it doesn't. Now, there are rumors that The Raid director Gareth Evans may be interested in doing a Deathstroke standalone flick, and honestly, I wouldn't mind that. DC should stop trying to emulate Marvel and just focus on one-shot, standalone flicks like this.

[h/t Batman-News]