Zack Snyder still wants Affleck’s Batman vs. Manganiello’s Deathstroke

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Steel yourselves for more petitions, my friends, because Zack Snyder would "love to see" Batman (Ben Affleck) versus Deathstroke (Joe Manganiello) after his version of Justice League makes its HBO Max debut. Both actors returned for additional photography to be used for the four-hour Snyder Cut and would have gone toe-to-toe if Ben Affleck's scrapped Batman feature made it to theaters. That being said, Affleck is reprising his role as the World's Greatest Detective for The Flash, so perhaps he'd be game for suiting up again to battle the world's greatest and deadliest assassin, Deathstroke.

"I love Joe, he's great. I really would love to see those two go at it, that would be fun," Snyder revealed to I Minutemen. "Who knows? We know that Ben's gonna be in The Flash movie, which is nice to see him [back as Batman]. It's trickling down, it's nice."

For the time being, Snyder has said that he's done making films in the DCEU after his version of Justice League is released. By that same token, Warner Bros. has stated that they have "no interest" in continuing the Snyder-Verse, and have gone so far as to call the idea a "dead end." While both parties have made their positions quite clear, it's unlikely that Snyder's loyal fanbase will take this decision lying down. Even now, I can sense that someone, somewhere, is in the midst of drafting a #ContinueTheSnyderVerse campaign. That said, there's a chance that Affleck and Manganiello could square off as their respective characters under a different filmmaker.

As it happens, Manganiello revealed new details related to Affleck's Batman in December 2020, saying it would have been "really cool, really dark, and really hard."

"It was a really dark story in which Deathstroke was like a shark or a horror movie villain that was dismantling Bruce's life from the inside out," Manganiello told Yahoo! Entertainment. "It was this systemic thing: He killed everyone close to Bruce and destroyed his life to try and make him suffer because he felt that Bruce was responsible for something that happened to him."

I personally think that Batman vs. Deathstroke would make for a hell of a movie, and I do hope that we get to see some iteration of it down the road. What do you all think? Would you be down for a Batman vs. Deathstroke movie, even if Snyder wasn't at the helm? Sound off in the comments section below and let us know.