A Deathstroke spinoff movie is officially brewing within the bowels of the DC Extended Universe.
News broke late last week, when it emerged that Warner Bros. had opened negotiations with Joe Manganiello and The Raid‘s Gareth Evans about potentially spearheading a DC-themed spinoff for Slade Wilson, the masked vigilante who has gone on to become one of Batman’s greatest foes.
Indeed, Manganiello’s on-screen villain had been tipped for a leading role in The Batman prior to the appointment of Matt Reeves (War For the Planet of the Apes), who allegedly ordered a page-one rewrite upon inheriting Ben Affleck’s solo vehicle. The latter is still attached to don the cape and cowl beyond Justice League, though aside from a potential production start in 2018, details are still few and far between.
Ditto for Deathstroke, which is still in the process of locking down its key creative players (see: Evans and Manganiello). Nevertheless, this is a spinoff project that has gained a ton of traction within the DC community, and sure enough, ComicBook.com has spotted a rather striking piece of fan art that first surfaced via Reddit.
Check it out in the gallery below, along with another one that caught our attention over the weekend.
An artist by the name of MessyPandas produced this super-stylish poster, which features a close-up of Deathstroke’s battle-worn mask – something that made the headlines over the weekend, incidentally. If you peer close enough, though, you’ll notice that Slade’s eyeslit is designed to resemble Batman’s famous symbol, which is hardly surprising given his ties to the Wayne family.
But can we expect that subplot to filter into Warner’s proposed spinoff? And perhaps most important of all, will Deathstroke be incorporated into the DCEU? Or placed behind The Joker as its own standalone movie? So many questions, so few answers.