It’s been a minute since we’ve heard anything about the Bane/Deathstroke team-up movie from DC Studios. With so many DC Studios projects cancelled or postponed, like The Authority, we were starting to wonder if this was ever happening. But now, via Deadline, we’ve had our first positive signs that it’s actually closer to becoming reality. According to the report, director Greg Mottola (Superbad), is possibly in contention to direct the film, which would team up the two DC Comics villains. Mottola directed several episodes of Peacemaker, so he’s clearly in James Gunn’s orbit. There are still no finished contracts for this film, which is still in very early development.
Apparently, there is no finished script for this film either, which currently doesn’t even have a title. We doubt it will be called “Deathstroke/Bane,” but who knows. Matthew Orton, who worked on scripts for Marvel’s Moon Knight, wrote a script in 2024. But it’s unclear if that’s the script that James Gunn is going with. In the comics, these two characters don’t have a ton to do with each other, aside from both being Batman adversaries. Deathstroke the Terminator didn’t even start out as a Batman villain, he originated in The New Teen Titans back in the ’80s, and was the team’s primary bad guy. Bane appeared in The Dark Knight Rises, of course, played by Tom Hardy. But we’ve never had the comics-accurate Latino version of the musclebound villain.
Deathstroke has never appeared in a film, aside from a cameo in Justice League’s post-credits scene, played by Joe Manganiello. This was meant to set up a Ben Affleck Batman movie that ultimately never happened. On television, however, the augmented mercenary, whose real name is Slade Wilson, appeared in both the Arrowverse as well as Titans. If you’re thinking “Slade Wilson sure sounds a lot like Wade Wilson, a.k.a. Deadpool,” that’s because Deadpool originated as a spoof character of Deathstroke. Can a movie launch Deathstroke into Deadpool levels of popularity? If they cast the right actor, it’s certainly possible. Now, we wait for the official word from James Gunn on this project.