#DeathstrokeHBOMax Tops Trends as DC Fans Campaign for Joe Manganiello Deathstroke Series or Movie

Justice League Snyder Cut actor Joe Manganiello joins DC fans calling for Deathstroke to return in #DeathstrokeHBOMax. Manganiello's one-eyed assassin, real name Slade Wilson, plots with Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) to carry out a vendetta against Batman (Ben Affleck) in Justice League — a still-dangling thread teeing up the killer's return in Affleck's planned but never-made Batman standalone. After Manganiello returned to the role for additional photography on Zack Snyder's Justice League, filmmaker Zack Snyder's four-hour director's cut, a coordinated social media event on Monday has hopefuls calling on WarnerMedia to greenlight a Deathstroke film or spin-off series on the HBO Max streaming service.

"Once Batman got canceled, I kind of wrote it off and thought, 'This is over,'" Manganiello told Entertainment Tonight. "I had actually shifted gears and started working on the studio on an origin film for Deathstroke that also didn't happen. So for me, I just let it go. And then two weeks before Justice League came out theatrically [in 2017], I got a call from one of the executives who said, 'By the way, we've retooled the scene and it's back in at the end to advertise a Justice League 2.'"

#DeathstrokeHBOMax pic.twitter.com/F0YmCl3tbz

— JOE MANGANIELLO (@JoeManganiello) April 5, 2021

Asked about a potential Deathstroke film or series, the True Blood and Magic Mike star said audiences "want more" of his fan-favorite DC Comics villain.

"Unfortunately, I don't own the IP," Manganiello said. "But I will say that a very prolific director, Gareth Evans — who I'm a huge fan of, I worship at the altar of Gareth Evans, who did The Raid and The Raid 2 — we had a long talk one night on Skype. He wanted to shoot an origin film for Deathstroke with me kind of in the air of The Raid. That didn't happen."

He added, "I think fans' appetites are wetted for more, they want more. And the Deathstroke origin wouldn't necessary have anything to do with this path, it was its own separate story. So it isn't necessarily a part of that universe, it was its own separate part."

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