James Gunn’s DC Studios has been quietly building toward one of its stranger pairings yet, a movie that will put Bane and Deathstroke on screen together. The project was unveiled in September 2024, with Captain America: Brave New World writer Matthew Orton enlisted to pen the film. Then, in May 2026, industry reports revealed Peacemaker director Greg Mottola was the frontrunner to helm the film, which is now being rumored to enter production soon after the Supergirl box office disaster. While DC Studios is yet to give any official statement about the Bane and Deathstroke movie, it’s clear the project is moving at a fast pace, which means it shouldn’t be long before we know who will take on the lead roles.
Videos by ComicBook.com
While there are many stars being fan-cast as Bane or Deathstroke, some of the best names are already out of the competition. For instance, Dave Bautista spent years publicly campaigning to play Bane, calling it a dream role going back to before Gunn and Peter Safran took over DC Studios. That campaign stalled in early 2023, when Bautista admitted the studio’s new leadership needed someone younger for the part, effectively removing himself from the running before casting had even begun. Bane’s casting remains a genuine open question because of that. Deathstroke’s casting does not have to be, because Joe Manganiello already spent years building the character before the DCEU collapsed around him.
Joe Manganiello Is Still a Perfect Deathstroke Casting
Manganiello’s history with Deathstroke goes back to September 2016, when Warner Bros. cast him for Ben Affleck’s planned solo Batman movie. The story would have sent Slade Wilson after Batman over the death of his son, a grudge triggered once Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) revealed Bruce Wayne’s real identity. Manganiello built the character from the ground up during that process, starting Slade Wilson’s arc in the American military rather than treating him as another superpowered brute. Then the project collapsed. Affleck stepped down as director in January 2017, and everything built around his version of Deathstroke went down with him. What survived was a single Justice League post-credits scene that year, later replaced by a different, more pointed exchange in Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
Manganiello wasn’t done with the character, though. In October 2017, Warner Bros. tapped The Raid director Gareth Evans to write and direct a standalone Deathstroke origin film, built around a treatment Manganiello had written himself and pitched directly to the studio. Sadly, that plan died within months. Justice League‘s box office collapse that November triggered a leadership shakeup at DC Films, and Manganiello has since explained that the $40 million villain-origin project simply stopped being treated as a financial priority once the dust settled. After that, an earlier draft of The Suicide Squad that would have pitted Deathstroke against Deadshot never made it to production, dropped once Gunn wrote his own version of that script. That means nearly a decade later, none of the groundwork Manganiello laid to build his take on Deathstroke has ever reached an audience.
That groundwork doesn’t have to go to waste, and Gunn’s DCU has already proven it recycles trusted talent instead of starting over from zero. Peacemaker’s (John Cena) entire show became DCU canon, and its Season 2 finale ended with Chris Smith exiled to a prison planet called Salvation, a plot thread Gunn has said will anchor major DCU stories going forward. Meanwhile, Viola Davis is still attached to a solo Waller series that Gunn has repeatedly confirmed remains in active development. On top of that, Xolo Maridueรฑa’s Blue Beetle is set to continue his story in an animated series instead of getting recast from scratch. Finally, Jason Momoa’s Aquaman didn’t survive the reboot, but the studio built the actor a new part in Lobo instead, and that casting already paid off on screen in Supergirl.ย
Manganiello fits neatly into that same pattern. Whether Gunn brings him back as a continuation of the Deathstroke he already built or recasts him fresh inside the new universe, the character work is already sitting there unused. Instead of going through the trouble of finding someone else to take the Deathstroke mantle, DC Studios could take advantage of a version of the character nine years in the making.
Do you think Joe Manganiello should return as Deathstroke, or does the DCU need an entirely fresh take on Slade Wilson? Leave a comment below and join the conversation now in the ComicBook Forum!
