Joe Manganiello has finally pulled back the curtain on one of the most tantalizing what-ifs in superhero cinema: the plot of Ben Affleck’s scrapped Batman movie. In his new memoir Bloodlines, the True Blood and Magic Mike star reveals that the cancelled film would have pitted Affleck’s Dark Knight against Deathstroke, the mercenary assassin Manganiello briefly played in Justice League.
According to Manganiello, who was set to reprise the role as the film’s main villain, Affleck planned to write, direct, produce and star in the project. The actor writes that Affleck envisioned the movie as “a superhero version of David Fincher’s The Game” — a psychological thriller in which Deathstroke would systematically “dismantle Batman’s entire life” after being led to believe that the Caped Crusader had murdered his son.
The revelations, first reported by Entertainment Weekly, land more than a decade after Affleck’s standalone Batman film was abandoned during Warner Bros.’ reshaping of its DC movie universe. Manganiello’s memoir, which was released Oct. 13, is now doing for DC fans what similar tell-alls have done for years: turning unmade movies into modern mythology.
Batman vs. Deathstroke: The Cancelled Plan
Manganiello describes Deathstroke less as a conventional supervillain than as a relentless force of nature — something like a shark or a horror-movie antagonist, steadily dismantling Bruce Wayne’s life from the inside out. The personal stakes would have been unusually high for a film about the Dark Knight: Slade Wilson believed Batman was responsible for the death of his son, and that conviction drove him to destroy everything Bruce Wayne cared about.
The actor says Deathstroke’s campaign of revenge would have included killing Commissioner James Gordon — played by J.K. Simmons in the earlier DC films — taking Alfred Pennyworth, played by Jeremy Irons, hostage, and breaking into the Batcave itself. Affleck’s Bruce Wayne would have watched his closest allies fall one by one as Deathstroke tore his world apart.
Manganiello also claims the film would have featured a brutal mid-movie confrontation in which Deathstroke would nearly kill both Batman and Batgirl, with the two escaping via an aboveground train. Batgirl never appeared in that iteration of DC’s screen universe — Leslie Grace’s solo Batgirl film was famously shelved by Warner Bros. as a tax write-off — and Manganiello does not say who might have played the character in Affleck’s film.
The Batman Film’s Climactic Finale
The movie would have ended, Manganiello writes, with a “climactic one-on-one showdown through the streets of Gotham,” a sequence Affleck said would be inspired by a CGI fight from the Batman: Arkham Origins video game trailer helmed by director Tim Miller. Fans of the Arkham games have long praised that trailer’s choreography, and the idea of Affleck translating it to live action has only deepened the sense of loss around the cancelled project.
The setup for the story began with Justice League itself. The original post-credits scene was designed to tee up the Batman project, with Deathstroke meeting Lex Luthor — played by Jesse Eisenberg — to discuss what to do about the Dark Knight. The theatrical version was later reworked, and Manganiello returned to shoot new footage for Zack Snyder’s director’s cut.
Manganiello has spoken movingly about how much the role meant to him. In Bloodlines, he details battling a life-threatening autoimmune disorder — including the removal of part of his intestine — and concealing a colostomy bag during costume fittings just to shoot his single day of Justice League footage. As long as the old DC universe was still going, he kept receiving possible offers for Deathstroke: a villain role in Aquaman 2, a Suicide Squad appearance, even a standalone film.
None of it happened. The DC universe was rebooted, Affleck stepped away from the cowl, and the film Manganiello describes — dark, violent, and intimate, a Fincher-inflected character study with a body count — remains one of the great unmade comic-book movies. Entertainment Weekly has reached out to representatives for Affleck and DC for comment on Manganiello’s account.
For Batman fans, the details are both a gift and a fresh wound: a reminder of a film that might have redefined the character on screen, and of how close it came to existing at all.