The Raid and V/H/S 2 director, Gareth Evans, is currently in talks to take the helm on the DC comic adaptation of Deathstroke.
After dropping Ben Affleck from The Batman production, in which Deathstroke would have made an appearance, Evans pitched DC with his idea for a spin-off that included the villain, which the bigwigs snapped up straight away.
Created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, Deathstroke is one of DC’s super villain’s, he is a mercenary and assassin who first appeared in The New Teen Titans (vol. 1) #2 (1980). He was rated the 24th Greatest Villian of All Time by Wizard magazine. Originally the archenemy of the Teen Titans, writers have developed him over the years as an adversary of other heroes in the DC Universe; parallels have been established between him and Batman.
Affleck had become familiar with the character after research for his The Batman movie, at the time he was excited to add the character to the franchise saying He’s a great villain because — I just had an instinctive feeling that he would match up with him well. You know, I’m a big admirer of that character as well, especially in the New 52 the way that they did Deathstroke, and I thought that it could work,”
True Blood’s Joe Manganiello was originally attached to star as Deathstroke, who is also known as Deathstroke the Terminator or Slade and is said to still be attached to Evans Spin-off.
Evans is currently in production with Apostle, a period thriller in which he has written and directed himself and has a cast that includes Dan Stevens, Michael Sheen, Lucy Boynton and Bill Milner.
