Joe Manganiello made his debut as Deathstroke in the post-credits scene of the 2017 film Justice League. In this scene, Deathstroke meets Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) on a yacht, where Luthor hints at forming a league of villains, teasing an intriguing partnership between the two characters.

Fans appreciated Manganiello’s portrayal of Deathstroke, but did you know he was once considered for the role of Superman before Henry Cavill was cast?

According to Snyder, Manganiello lacked the innocence that Cavill possessed.

I love Joe too, by the way. Really he was the only other guy I was thinking of, to be honest, other than Henry. I think Henry just has this innocence too, he has both, which is tricky. Superman needs the teeniest bit of that.

After losing the role, it took years for Manganiello to re-enter the DCEU. The actor admitted he didn’t dwell on missing out on Superman and was eager to work with Affleck on the standalone Batman movie.

He wanted me to be [Superman]. I couldn’t do the movie but Zack came back around and called me, and said ‘I want you to meet Ben Affleck’ and that’s how I met Ben, and that’s how I got cast as Deathstroke in Ben’s Batman movie.

Deathstroke was originally slated to be the villain in Ben Affleck’s version of The Batman, with Affleck both directing and starring. The plot would have featured Deathstroke systematically destroying Batman’s life. However, this version never came to fruition as Affleck stepped down from directing, and the project evolved into Matt Reeves’ The Batman (2022), starring Robert Pattinson in a rebooted, non-DCEU continuity.

Despite this setback, Manganiello’s dream of being part of the DC cinematic universe persisted. He wrote his own Deathstroke screenplay, which gained some interest at Warner Bros. before the studio opted to reboot the DC Universe. After nearly a decade, Manganiello revealed that James Gunn eventually convinced him to let go of the project. However, before this, DC made one last attempt to revisit the older cinematic universes, suggesting they might explore them in the future.

James [Gunn] is my buddy, and James and I had a conversation about it because Jim lee over at DC Comics wanted me to create a graphic novel series based on the screenplay that I wrote for the Deathstroke origin film that, when they were dismantling the DCEU, that went to the wayside as well, Jim read it, and wanted it to be a graphic novel series, but no one could assure me that, if it garnered the attention of directors and producers, that I couldn’t be attached. So I had to let it go. James Gunn was just like, ‘Let it go.