Batman Villains Bane, Deathstroke Getting Movie Treatment at DC Studios (Exclusive)

DC will be doing some back-breaking development work to bring these criminals to the big-screen.
September 27, 2024 2:05pm

With a big-budget Joker movie just weeks away and a Penguin HBO series freshly unveiled, a few other DC villain are being targeted for the spotlight.

Sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Bane, the super-steroid injecting antagonist who was previously seen in the 2012 Christopher Nolan movie The Dark Knight Rises, and Deathstroke, another popular arch-nemesis in the comic book company’s fold, are being lassoed together and for a movie. The James Gunn and Peter Safran-led DC Studios is developing a script from Matthew Orton, a scribe on the upcoming Captain America: Brave New World movie.

There is no director on the project.

Bane is a relatively recent addition to Batman’s rogues gallery, with writer Chuck Dixon and artist Graham Nolan creating him in the early 1990s. The character was born and raised in a prison on a fictional Caribbean isle, a locale that allowed him to not only hone his brute fighting skills but also absorb the teachings from all manner of international criminals. He later was the subject of a horrific steroidal test, an experiment that left him incredibly strong but also addicted to its serums.

The character made his mark in an epic storyline titled “Knightfall,” in which he brutally broke Batman’s back, a story that catapulted him to the upper rankings of Bat-villains. The character has appeared in numerous video games and TV series, and was notably portrayed by a muffled Tom Hardy in the final installment of Nolan’s Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight Rises.

Deathstroke was first introduced in 1980 to be a top-tier villain for the Teen Titans, but the super-enhanced master assassin grew to become one of DC’s most popular bad guys, squaring off against Batman and the Justice League, and headlining his own comic title several times.

The character, created by writer Marv Wolfman and artist George Perez, has popped up in video games and animated fare; Esai Morales played the character in the recent live-action Titans series, while Joe Manganiello cameoed as the one-eyed killer in some of Zack Snyder’s DC movies. At one point, he was going to be the villain of The Batman, back when Ben Affleck was directing and starring. At another point, he was attached to star in a Deathstroke movie from The Raid director Gareth Evans.

DC and Warner Bros. have found considerable success in highlighting villains on the feature side. The most prominent of examples is Joker, with filmmaker Todd Phillips’ unique take on the Clown Prince of Crime propelling the movie to a $1 billion box office and Oscar gold for actor Joaquin Phoenix and composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. The sequel, Joker: Folie a Deux, premiered at the Venice Film Festival and opens Oct. 4.

Colin Farrell is starring The Penguin, a spinoff from Matt Reeves’ 2022 film The Batman. The eight-episode series has garnered strong reviews as it debuted Sept. 19 on HBO.