Joe Manganiello Will portray Deathstroke in the new Batman Movie

Joe Manganiello Will portray Deathstroke 

in Ben Affleck's new Batman movie

Big, ambitious superhero movies have a tendency to inspire fan rumors and speculation, much of which turns out to be untrue. Every once in a while, though, there’s an exception. For this week’s top story, we have to go back to early 2015, when Warner Bros and DC Comics were casting last month’s Suicide Squad. At the time, there was talk about Joe Manganiello (Magic Mike, HBO’s True Blood) being in the running to play Slade Wilson, AKA Deathstroke the Terminator. The reasoning was that Manganiello had been in director David Ayer’s 2014 film Sabotage, so the two were going to work on Suicide Squad together as well; Manganiello obviously was not in Suicide Squad, and neither was Slade Wilson/Deathstroke. Fast forward to last week, when Ben Affleck posted a teaser video of “someone” playing Deathstroke, which was quickly confirmed to be for Affleck’s solo Batman (and possibly Justice League in 2017?). Well, there’s still no indication that Deathstroke will be in Justice League, but this week, Joe Manganiello was indeed confirmed as Batfleck’s Slade Wilson. Some sources have also described Deathstroke as being the “main villain” in the Batman solo movie, while others have claimed that “just about every major bad guy you’ve ever wanted to see” will be in the film (though it’s possible both claims could be non-exclusively true). As for the character, he’s a villain-turned-antihero originally most associated in the 1980s with New Teen Titans (the team with Cyborg, Raven, Nightwing, etc), who, like many popular comics characters, later branched out into other heroes’ adventures. And if that name “Slade Wilson” sounds familiar, it might be because Rob Liefeld created Marvel’s Deadpool (AKA Wade Wilson) as something of an “homage” to DC’s Deathstroke. There’s still no release date for Affleck’s solo movie as Batman, but it’s looking more and more like Warner Bros might be slotting it for sometime in 2018, with filming to possibly start sometime in 2017.

Ben Affleck

Joe Manganiello