Joe Manganiello will play the villain in Ben Affleck’s forthcoming Batman film.
The writer and director only confirmed the nefarious super soldier Deathstroke will be joining his stand-alone film earlier this week but it seems it hasn’t taken him long to find his star as the 39-year-old actor has already taken on the role.
According to Deadline, it’s not yet known if Deathstroke will be the main villain in the forthcoming blockbuster but it’s believed he will be one of the leads.
Affleck – who played the Dark Knight in this year’s ‘Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice’ – is remaining tight lipped on his project at the moment but set tongues wagging at the end of August when he posted a short video on Twitter of Deathstroke, who is also known as Slade, walking towards the camera.
Since then, fans have also started speculating that DC Comics supervillain Mr. Freeze could make an appearance in the upcoming movie as at the end of Affleck’s clip he panned out to a Titan Cool portable air conditioner.
Deathstroke was created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez and first appeared in DC Comic ‘The New Teen Titans’ #2 in 1980.
The character has a grudge against Green Arrow but his original enemy was the Teen Titans.
He has also gone up against Batman on several occasions in DC Comics following their first duel in 1991’s ‘City of Assassins’ story, in which Deathstroke badly beat up the Dark Knight.
Slade/Deathstroke has also appeared on The CW’s TV series ‘Arrow’, and creator Marc Guggenheim recently revealed the character was involved in "another DC project".
When asked why the villain hadn’t returned to ‘Arrow’, he wrote on tumblr: "The character of Slade Wilson is currently tied up in another DC project. Walter is more likely."
Meanwhile, the release date for the untitled film is yet to be announced.
Joe Manganiello to play Deathstroke in Batman movie
