Gareth Evans Talks Unmade ‘Deathstroke’ Origin Movie Pitch

While sitting down with Yahoo UK to discuss his new series Gangs of London, The Raid director Gareth Evans spoke about his time attached to the DC movie ‘Deathstroke’ focused on the character of the same name.

Evans talks about the history of his involvement with the project, his communication with presumed star Joe Manganiello, and what the future holds for the film.

“I was actually quite enthused and excited about Deathstroke back in the day, when it was first pitched to me. I met with them, and talked to them about it, and was certainly attached to it at a certain point. I’ve spoken to Joe Manganiello, who was attached to star as Deathstroke. I spoke to him a while back, and we both lamented the fact that it didn’t happen. But yeah, I don’t really have much more than that, in terms of anything lately on it. I don’t know what exactly happened. I think there might have been a change of personnel, as happens quite a lot in big US studios. I think that project just stopped being a priority for them. It never really went further than two or three phone calls. I’ve never heard anything since, so I just presumed that project was either on the back burner somewhere, or someone else might be doing it.”

He then went into more detail on the direction and story that the film would have had if made, which includes inspiration from South Korean noir films and various Deathstroke comics.

“The plan was, I wanted to tell something that would be a lean story, that would be kind of an origin of that character. Something that felt like it could be 100 minutes or 110 minutes long, max – not to go over the two hour period with it. Back then, I was massively influenced by the noir films coming out of South Korea, so that was my pitch. I was like, these films are amazing: the texture, and the tones of colours, the grit and the aggression of them is super interesting to use to tell Deathstroke’s story. I’ll be the first one to admit it, I’m not a massive comic book or superhero fan, but something about Deathstroke interested me. I did some reading into it – not enough to make real hardcore fanboys happy – but I tried my best to consume as much as I could in the time that I was on it, for a bit. When I read up on it, there were about three different versions of how his character originated. And so I thought we could do something quite Shakespearean, in terms of how he loses his eye, and how he gets created as the character that he is. We had ideas of the kind of style that we would have gone for with that, which would have married some of the more grounded style that I have, but then, because of the world of it, it would allow me to be a bit more flamboyant and a bit more stylised. We could have taken it in some really interesting areas. We had some pretty bold ideas there that could have been really visceral and really fun. But, yeah, I don’t know. Who knows? They might come back again in five or ten years time, you never know.”

 

Next up on the DC film slate is Wonder Woman 1984, slated for an August release, The Suicide Squad, which will release a year later, and The Batman in October 2021.

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