Over the weekend, a story popped up that suggested the script for Ben Affleck’s solo Batman movie—tentatively titled The Batman—was shaping up to be pretty terrible, with greedy Warner Bros. executives supposedly admitting that they didn’t care if it was good because it would make money either way. The original story came from Bret Easton Ellis of all people, and though he quickly walked it back when he realized what he had done, it was still enough to get the internet anxious about the the Caped Crusader’s cinematic future.
However, while normal people may be worried, Joe Manganiello isn’t letting random speculation get him down. He’s set to play the villain Deathstroke in The Batman, and he recently appeared on Mark Madden’s podcast and talked about the film in rather glowing terms. “Everything is lined up for a really, really, really great movie,” he said, adding that he doesn’t specifically mean a great superhero movie, “but just a great, great movie.” That’s three uses of the word “really” and three uses of the word “great,” which certainly does sound really great.
He also offered some vague details about the film, claiming that it will be “a fresh take” that goes down a road nobody’s really done before, while still being “completely integral” to “who Batman is.” That’s an interesting thing to say, especially since there have been a lot of wildly different Batman movies over the years. We’ve had campy and cartoony Batmans, we’ve had grand operatic Batmans, and we’ve had crime-thriller Batmans that underplay the comic book stuff as much as possible, so what fresh take is left?
It’ll probably be a while before we find out.