Two of Batman’s most vicious villains may soon be sharing the big screen. According to the Hollywood Reporter, DC Studios has hired writer Matthew Orton (Captain America: Brave New World) to write a movie that would feature both Bane and Deathstroke.
There’s no director yet attached and no guarantee the film ever happens. But, it’s being written with the hope that it’ll happen. io9 reached out to DC for comment or clarification and will update the piece if or when we hear back.
The move comes on the eve of the second Joker movie, Joker: Folie à Deux, hitting theaters for Warner Bros. and DC as well as The Penguin rising to popularity on Max. Though those iterations of the Bat-villains aren’t part of the larger DC Universe that DC Studio heads James Gunn and Peter Safran are developing, each is proof that projects about villains can be hits. Not to mention Gunn as well as David Ayer’s Suicide Squad movies. All of those surely have a lot to do with a Bane-Deathstroke movie going into development.
Bane, of course, was famously played by Tom Hardy in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. And while that was the character’s biggest cultural moment, he rose to popularity in the comics by breaking Batman’s back in the popular run “Knightfall.” Deathstroke was introduced sometime earlier and appeared in the Titans TV show as well as briefly in Justice League, played by Joe Manganiello. That version of the character was also almost the villain in a Ben Affleck Batman movie and even flirted with getting his own movie, though neither happened. Obviously.
The question now though is, does this movie potentially happen before or after The Brave and the Bold, which is the movie that’s expected to introduce Batman into the DC Universe proper? It could be cool and interesting to mess around in the Rogues’ Gallery before meeting the Caped Crusader and Boy Wonder. Or, considering that film already has a director attached (The Flash’s Andy Muschietti) and this doesn’t, maybe it’s further down the road. The development status of all of these DC projects remains, largely, a mystery.
What we do know is this. Creature Commandos, out on Max on December 5, will be the first official story in Gunn and Safran’s DC Universe. That’ll be followed up by Superman in July of 2025 and Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow in June of 2026. In between there, we’re likely to get that Lanterns show that’s currently casting, and at least one unrelated Batman movie, Matt Reeves’ The Batman Part II, out October 2026.
What are your thoughts on Bane and Deathstroke coming together though? Do they team up? Do they fight each other? A bit of both? Let us know.
Want more io9 news? Check out when to expect the latest Marvel, Star Wars, and Star Trek releases, what’s next for the DC Universe on film and TV, and everything you need to know about the future of Doctor Who.
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