How Joe Manganiello Let Go of His Cavill Grudge After Losing Superman & Deathstroke Roles: “James Gunn was just like, Let it go”

Joe Manganiello was first introduced as Deathstroke in a post-credits scene of the 2017 film ‘Justice League.’ In this scene, Deathstroke meets with Lex Luthor (played by Jesse Eisenberg) on a yacht. Luthor hints at forming a league of villains, setting up what appears to be quite an interesting collaboration between two characters.

Fans loved Manganiello good enough as Deathstroke but did you know that the actor was at one point selected to play Superman instead of Cavill?

Manganiello, according to Snyder’s words lacked the innocence that Cavill had:

I love Joe too, by the way. Really he was the only other guy I was thinking of, to be honest, other than Henry. I think Henry just has this innocence too, he has both, which is tricky. Superman needs the teeniest bit of that.

Following the loss of the role, it took years for Manganiello to get into the DCEU again. According to the actor himself, he didn’t like to dwell on the fact that he lost the role of Superman and was eager to work with Affleck on the standalone Batman movie:

He wanted me to be [Superman]. I couldn’t do the movie but Zack came back around and called me, and said ‘I want you to meet Ben Affleck’ and that’s how I met Ben, and that’s how I got cast as Deathstroke in Ben’s Batman movie.

Deathstroke was set to be the villain in Ben Affleck’s version of ‘The Batman.’ Affleck was originally both directing and starring in the film. The storyline reportedly would have featured Deathstroke systematically dismantling Batman’s life. However, this version of ‘The Batman’ never materialized. Affleck stepped down from directing, and the project eventually evolved into Matt Reeves’ ‘The Batman’ (2022), which stars Robert Pattinson in a rebooted non-DCEU or DCU continuity.

But, the actor’s dream of being a part of the DC cinematic universe – ANY DC cinematic universe still wasn’t over at this point. Joe Manganiello wrote his own Deathstroke screenplay, which garnered some interest at Warner Bros. before the studio decided to reboot the DC Universe.

After nearly a decade, Manganiello revealed that James Gunn convinced him to move on from the project. However, before this, DC made one final attempt to revisit the older cinematic universes, hinting that they might explore them in the future.

James [Gunn] is my buddy, and James and I had a conversation about it because Jim lee over at DC Comics wanted me to create a graphic novel series based on the screenplay that I wrote for the Deathstroke origin film that, when they were dismantling the DCEU, that went to the wayside as well, Jim read it, and wanted it to be a graphic novel series, but no one could assure me that, if it garnered the attention of directors and producers, that I couldn’t be attached. So I had to let it go. James Gunn was just like, ‘Let it go.

As you can see, Manganiello eventually lost all hope of being a part of DCU, and it’s only thanks to Gunn that he was able to let go of it. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below!

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