Joe Manganiello says Ben Affleck’s canceled Batman movie would have turned Deathstroke into a personal nightmare for Bruce Wayne: the assassin would kill Commissioner Gordon, take Alfred hostage, break into the Batcave and nearly kill Batman and Batgirl. The details come from Manganiello’s new memoir, and they sketch a revenge thriller that never made it to a camera.
Manganiello was already introduced as Deathstroke in the post-credits scene of Justice League. Affleck’s planned solo film would have expanded that tease into a full story. According to Manganiello, Deathstroke believed Batman had caused his son’s death and set out to dismantle the hero’s entire life. That is the actor’s account of an unproduced script—not a finished movie, and not an official plot summary released by Warner Bros.
Deathstroke’s revenge was aimed at Bruce Wayne’s whole world
In the version Manganiello describes, Deathstroke would not simply challenge Batman in a string of fights. He would attack the people, places and routines that make Bruce Wayne’s life recognizable. Gordon would be killed. Alfred would be taken hostage. Deathstroke would enter the Batcave, the one place that usually belongs to Batman alone.
Manganiello says the villain believed Batman had murdered his son. That false belief gave the story a grim engine: Deathstroke’s revenge would be deliberate, intimate and directed at Bruce’s identity as much as his body. Manganiello compared the proposed movie to a superhero version of David Fincher’s The Game, a useful clue that Affleck’s film was imagined as a psychological trap as well as an action spectacle.
The reported set pieces get stranger from there. Manganiello says a mid-film fight would have left Batman and Batgirl close to death before the pair escaped on an aboveground train. He also describes a climactic one-on-one showdown through Gotham that Affleck said would draw inspiration from a computer-generated fight sequence in Batman: Arkham Asylum.
This was a real development project, but the plot details are one participant’s account
Affleck’s solo Batman movie was not just a rumor attached to a post-credits wink. Affleck was expected to write, direct, produce and star in the project, with Manganiello set to reprise Deathstroke. Manganiello’s memoir, Bloodlines, now gives readers a fuller sense of the story he says the filmmakers were preparing.
That distinction matters because there is no movie to watch and no final production script available to compare. Manganiello is a participant describing what he recalls from development. Entertainment Weekly contacted representatives for Affleck and DC for comment, but its report did not include a response. The described plot should therefore be presented as Manganiello’s account, not as a verified studio-approved synopsis.
Affleck later explained publicly that he could not crack the project. In a 2019 interview with Jimmy Kimmel, he said he had been unable to make the script work. The New York Times reported in 2020 that Affleck had described personal concerns about returning to the role, including a warning from someone who read the script that the experience could have severe consequences for his health.
The Batgirl and train escape point to a very different DC future
The planned film also suggests a screen DC universe that never arrived. The Batgirl Manganiello mentions had not appeared in that version of the franchise. The character would have entered the story as Batman’s partner in a desperate escape, though Manganiello did not identify who might have played her.
Instead, the theatrical DC films moved on without Affleck’s solo story. Robert Pattinson headlined Matt Reeves’ separate The Batman, while Affleck later returned in Zack Snyder’s Justice League and The Flash. Manganiello’s Deathstroke, introduced as a looming threat, never got the full confrontation the post-credits scene seemed to promise.
That leaves fans with a vivid piece of alternate-universe Batman history: a movie where Deathstroke tries to dismantle Bruce’s world from the inside, Alfred becomes a hostage, and Gotham’s train system apparently becomes an escape route. The tantalizing part is not pretending the movie was secretly finished somewhere. It is seeing how much story had already been imagined—and how radically different the next chapter might have felt if Affleck had found a way to make it.
Sources and image credit
- Entertainment Weekly’s report on Manganiello’s memoir and the unmade film, published October 17, 2026.
- The New York Times’ 2020 interview with Affleck on his experience with the role and script.
- Featured photo: Joe Manganiello at Comic-Con International in 2010, by Ronald Woan, via Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
