Last month, Matt Reeves began offering some new details on his vision for The Batman, and though he didn’t specifically say so at the time, it seems like his vision might be a lot different from what Ben Affleck was originally planning for the movie. That’s because Reeves recently said on MTV’s Happy Sad Confused podcast that he ditched the original script that Affleck had worked on, saying that “it’s a new story” and that they’re “just starting again.”
That comes The Hollywood Reporter, and while it’s probably better for The Batman in the long run, it does mean that what little we knew about the original script—specifically that master assassin Deathstroke was the main villain—may have been changed. Joe Manganiello was supposed to play the one-eyed killer in the movie, but in March he suggested that he didn’t really know what was happening with The Batman anymore. That seems to indicate that Deathstroke will no longer be in the movie, and that looks even more likely when you throw in circumstantial evidence like Josh Gad inexplicably tweeting a photo of The Penguin or the TV version of Deathstroke suddenly making a fairly unexpected return on The CW’s Arrow.
We can’t really know for sure just yet, but don’t be surprised if Slade Wilson doesn’t show up in The Batman and Oswald Cobblepot does.