Warner Bros.’ The Batman has been under intense scrutiny from fans since before it was even a sparkle in Ben Affleck’s eye, mostly due to the varyingly disappointing quality of the DC superhero movies, and its recent batch of troubles has only made people even more skeptical that it will be able to rise above Man Of Steel and Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice. Things are getting back on track, though, with director Matt Reeves on board, so now Joe Manganiello—who is set to play Deathstroke, the film’s villain—wants “the media” to stop being “drama queens.”
In an interview with Robert Irvine Magazine—as in the celebrity chef—Manganiello noted that “everyone involved wants to make this the best film possible,” so he thinks it’s “funny” that “the media” is running with excessively dramatic stories about the script being in trouble, or the director beginning to openly hate the project, or the director quitting the project, and then the studio struggling to find a replacement director. He didn’t mention all of those things, but they did definitely happen.
Manganiello also talked about how he had “a lot of superhero and supervillain roles” being offered to him, but Deathstroke was the only one that seemed like the right fit for him. Later, the interviewer brought up the fact that Manganiello will be the first person to play Deathstroke in a live-action film, which prompted him to casually dismiss Manu Bennett’s take on Deathstroke from the phenomenal second season of Arrow:
Yeah, I guess there was a TV show but I haven’t seen it. I won’t watch it. This is my character, an exciting one, and has the capacity I think, to be a great villain. And what all the great ones can do is polarize an audience. When I was a kid I always rooted for the villain. As a kid I think I would have rooted for him and I think fans will.
Assuming the drama queens don’t hold back production anymore with their incessant worrying, The Batman is set to start filming soon.