When it was announced that Gareth Evans would be taking the helm of a Deathstroke movie, fans were understandably very excited. After all, this is the man that brought us the heart-pounding action and visceral thrills of The Raid movies, which were hailed by many as action masterpieces.
Unfortunately, Justice League's failure to find success at the box office meant that many of the projects that were scheduled to follow Zack Snyder's movie wound up being put on ice, and we've heard very little about Warner Bros.' plans for Slade Wilson since.
Now, Evans has shared some details on his original vision for a Deathstroke origin story (presumably starring Joe Manganiello), which sounds like it would have been heavily influenced by South Korean cinema.
"The plan was, I wanted to tell something that would be a lean story, that would be kind of an origin of that character," the filmmaker explained to Yahoo. "Something that felt like it could be 100 minutes or 110 minutes long, max – not to go over the two hour period with it. Back then, I was massively influenced by the noir films coming out of South Korea, so that was my pitch. I was like, these films are amazing: the texture, and the tones of colours, the grit and the aggression of them is super interesting to use to tell Deathstroke’s story.”
As for why the project was ultimately scrapped, Evans says he's not exactly sure, but believes it's possible that a Deathstroke movie simply stopped being a priority for the studio post-Justice League.
“We had some pretty bold ideas there that could have been really visceral and really fun. But, yeah, I don’t know. Who knows? They might come back again in five or ten years time, you never know. I don’t know what exactly happened. There might have been a change of personnel, as happens quite a lot in big U.S. studios. I think that project just stopped being a priority for them. It never really went further than two or three phone calls. I’ve never heard anything since, so I just presumed that project was either on the back burner somewhere, or someone else might be doing it.”
Let's hope WB does decide to take another look at this one and does everything possible to get Evans back on board, because his take on the DC Comics villain sounds glorious.
For now, The Raid fans will want to check out the Evans-produced Gangs of London on Sky Atlantic.