Ben Affleck's Batman Movie Storyboard Shows Deathstroke Fight Scene With Joe Manganiello

Affleck's version of The Batman would have pit the Dark Knight against the assassin Deathstroke.

By Cameron Bonomolo

Jay Oliva, the storyboard artist who described Ben Affleck's unmade solo Batman movie that built on 80 years of Bat-mythos as "f—ing awesome," has shared a board visualizing a hand-to-hand fight sequence between the Dark Knight and Joe Manganiello's assassin Deathstroke. Oliva — whose credits include the Zack Snyder-directed Man of Steel, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, Zack Snyder's Justice League, and the adult animated series Twilight of the Gods — revealed the frame (below) in celebration of Batman Day 2024. 

"I've worked on a lot of Batman things and what was really cool about it was, it was tying together a lot of really cool Batman storylines that had never been really explored," Oliva said in an interview last year, adding that the standalone movie co-written by Affleck and then-DC CCO Geoff Johns "was gonna cover something that had never really been covered in comics, but was building off of storylines in the Batman mythos over the last 80 years and approaching it from a new kind of perspective."

Along with concept art of Affleck's new Batsuit design that would have seen Batman suit up in a grey-black suit made from ballistic materials and kevlar-like armor, concept artist Keith Christensen shared his design for a tactical costume to be worn by the masked mercenary who first appeared opposite Jesse Eisenberg's Lex Luthor in the post-credits scene of 2017's Justice League.

While a followup to that scene never materialized, Manganiello told the Comic Book Nation podcast that Slade Wilson blamed Batman for the death of his son. After learning Batman's secret identity from Luthor, Deathstroke would then target Bruce Wayne and his allies, including Barbara Gordon's Batgirl.

"The Batman film was going to be kind of similar to...  imagine if David Fincher's The Game was real," Manganiello said. "[Deathstroke] systematically dismantles Bruce's life and starts murdering all the people in it. Destroys his finances and just, basically, paints him into a corner. But it was a real psychological thriller, and Deathstroke was kind of like a horror movie villain, like a shark, kind of like [in] Jaws."

Affleck was attached to write and direct a solo Batman movie under Walter Hamada's DC Films regime — tentatively titled The Batman — as part of the DC Extended Universe. Once planned for an early 2017 shooting start, the Argo and The Town filmmaker dropped out and was replaced by War for the Planet of the Apes director Matt Reeves. Affleck eventually announced he hung up the cape and cowl, and Reeves rebooted Batman with Robert Pattinson as a younger caped crusader. 

"I found that I had lost my enthusiasm or passion for it," Affleck explained to GQ in 2020 of his axed Batman movie. "This should really be made by somebody for whom it's their wildest dream come true and, for me, it had become something different and it was clear to me that it was time to move on. But I do have some really fond memories, particularly of Batman v Superman, and how exciting that was. And how energizing it was and how much fun we had."

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