Director Gareth Evans has given us a little clarification on the status of the solo-Deathstroke movie starring Joe Manganiello.
Evans was initially tapped to direct Manganiello in a solo adventure last October, after the actor had been cast as the lead.
Evans on how he got the job:
I had a phone call which I think was publicized a bit, about Deathstroke with DC. We talked about that before, we had a few conversations. One of the guys at DC and at Warner Brothers, one with Joe, who has been on the character for some time now, who is super passionate about that character, by the way. I’ve never met anyone who knows more about their character.
Since he secured the directing job, Evans even dived into the comics and other media for research.
I was feeling my way around it and did a bit of research and read a couple of those comic books. I started to dig in to the origin stories. I like to figure out what the origin of a character is and what shapes them, what paints them as a personality. There’s been a few iterations, actually, of his origin, which is interesting to see. There was the original way his character was created and then there’s been a few creative licenses taken in terms of how he lost his eye, for example, and stuff like that. So, it was an interesting sort of experience.
So, Is ‘Deathstroke’ Still On-Track?
However, since then there has been total radio silence from the studio about the project. Literally, no new updates about Deathstroke have been released, even to Evans. It got to the point where the filmmaker resorted to hearing rumors from news sites. Apparently, Warner Bros.’ enthusiasm for the movie production sort of petered out. Fortunately, Evans seems to be fine with that.
Nothing really went beyond those conversations. I haven’t heard anything for a really long time. To be honest, every time I see an article written I keep wanting to ask, “Okay, what is it you guys know that I don’t know?” because I haven’t heard anything for a good while yet. So I don’t know if that will ever come back full circle at some point, but I know I haven’t had any conversation about that project for a long time now.
Despite Manganiello’s continued insistence that the movie is still happening, Deathstroke seems to be dead in the water, at least for the time being.