Post Justice League was a weird time for Warner Bros and their DC Films as it was like every other day news broke about a film in development, one such film got a lot of excitement was Gareth Evans handling Deathstroke.
We just saw the brilliant (one of the only things when talking about JL) end credit scene where we were introduced to Joe Manganiello’s Slade Wilson and now the man behind The Raid movies were going to do a movie based on the DC Comics villain!
It was a match made in heaven and could’ve been the first R-rated DCEU movie.
Clearly nothing happened, but Evans has spoken to Yahoo about what he wanted to do with the film and character and now making us sad again.
“I was actually quite enthused and excited about [Deathstroke] back in the day, when it was first pitched to me,” Evans recalls. “I met with them [Warner Bros], and talked to them about it, and was certainly attached to it at a certain point.”
As said above, this would’ve been during the fallout of the reception to the 2017 superhero team-up which lead to the film bombing and losing the studio money. Walter Hamada was appointed Chief of DC Films and Deathstroke went to the wayside as Hamada focused on a new direction.
It’s a shame Hamada didn’t push this film forward as Evans revealed some info about what he had in mind for the movie with a feel of a South Korean noir with a tight origin story.
“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.
Evans added “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 the colours, the grit and the aggression of them is super interesting to use to tell Deathstroke’s story.”
The Welsh filmmaker talked about not being a massive comic book film, but found the Slade Wilson character interesting, so it was possible we would’ve gotten a newer origin story and for one would’ve loved to seen Manganiello showcase what he could do with this mercenary/ assassin.
The top thing people would’ve been excited to see was what sort of fight style Evans and his stunt people would’ve created.
“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.” Evans revealed. “But then because of the world of it, it would allow me to me to be a bit more flamboyant and bit more stylised.
“We could have taken it in some really interesting areas” he added.
“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” reflects Evan.
I hope DC bring in for something sooner then this late as he clearly shows how talented he is as a creator because as well as The Raid movies, his new series Gangs of London is fucking incredible!
It’s clear Evans took some of those ideas, especially the South Korea noir feel, and added to this series. In a lot of way, Evans turned London into his British Gotham and it works fantastically.
The Bear Cave 
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