Neither Safran nor Gunn were looking for a standalone movie about Clayface, a lesser-known villain from the Batman comics. But they were won over by Flanagan\u2019s vision, which eventually became a script by Flanagan and Hossein Amini.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt fit within the broader framework of how James and I saw the broad spectrum of film and television shows we want to make,\u201d says Safran. \u201cBut it really was Mike Flanagan\u2019s passion and pitch. You always look for volunteers and not recruits.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not many studios would push \u201cClayface\u201d<\/a> to the front of the pack, but Gunn, who started in horror, and Safran, who helped launch \u201cThe Conjuring\u201d franchise<\/a>, made \u201cClayface\u201d \u2014 with James Watkins eventually coming on to direct \u2014 part of their first wave of DCU films, following \u201cSuperman\u201d<\/a> and \u201cSupergirl.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cClayface\u201d is a darker detour for DC. And, if it proves successful, it just might open up a darker frontier for comic book movies.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the get-go, this was not designed to be a traditional superhero movie,\u201d Safran says. \u201cIt was always supposed to be a character-driven story that uses the DC mythology. If you took the DC elements out of it, it would just be a great horror movie.\u201d<\/p>\n That makes \u201cClayface\u201d something unusual in the normally calculated realm of superhero movies. It\u2019s R-rated. It\u2019s modestly budgeted at $40 million. And it stars the relatively unknown Tom Rhys Harries as a little-known DC villain.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of people wouldn\u2019t necessarily know who Clayface is, but they wouldn\u2019t need to,\u201d says Watkins, the Welsh filmmaker of \u201cSpeak No Evil\u201d and \u201cThe Woman in Black.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s its own movie.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018Supergirl\u2019 disappointment puts pressure on \u2018Clayface\u2019 <\/p>\n That, Safran says, is by design. He and Gunn have emphasized filmmaker-first projects at DC, carving a more idiosyncratic, multigenre path that has won them fans but also added some degree of risk. <\/p>\n \u201cClayface,\u201d which opens in theaters Oct. 22, will debut shortly after Skydance and David Ellison\u2019s takeover of Warner Bros.<\/a> Ellison is keeping Gunn and Safran to lead DC, even though they\u2019re coming off a misfire in the box-office disappointment of \u201cSupergirl.\u201d<\/a> That puts more pressure on \u201cClayface\u201d to perform.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you look at the cumulative choices that we\u2019ve made, I think it\u2019s pretty clear we\u2019re trying to do things differently,\u201d says Safran. \u201cNot everything is going to work. The pressure we feel for \u2018Clayface\u2019 is honestly the pressure we feel for everything we put into the world.\u201d<\/p>\n There have been a few movies to meld horror and superheroes together, including Wes Craven\u2019s \u201cSwamp Thing\u201d (1982), Sam Raimi\u2019s \u201cDarkman\u201d (1990) and \u201cBrightburn\u201d (2019), a sinister twist on the \u201cSuperman\u201d origin story that Gunn produced.<\/p>\n But Clayface, a Batman villain created in 1940 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, is still an unlikely character to put center stage. In the comics, he began as Basil Karlo, a B-list actor who, furious that he wasn\u2019t cast in a horror remake he had previously starred in, wears the movie\u2019s Clayface costume to kill the film\u2019s actors.<\/p>\n Winning over skeptical DC fans<\/p>\n Some fan skepticism has followed \u201cClayface.\u201d Last week, Gunn defended the choice on the social media platform Threads after a user asked, \u201cWho the (expletive) asked for a \u2018Clayface\u2019 movie?\u201d<\/p>\n Gunn replied: \u201cAlthough it may seem like it, Hollywood isn\u2019t a place where the only way to make a movie is the public voting on what IP they want to see that they\u2019ve seen countless times before.\u201d<\/p>\n Watkins\u2019 film, taking inspiration from the two-part episode \u201cFeat of Clay\u201d from \u201cBatman: The Animated Series,\u201d twists the original Clayface story slightly. Rising movie star Matt Hagen (Harries) is disfigured by a mob boss (Eddie Marsan) and rapidly falls out of Hollywood. After numerous unsuccessful surgeries, he resorts to an experimental process created by the scientist Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) that uses an untested, claylike living organism to rehabilitate his face.<\/p>\n \u201cPart of the joy was being surprised at what\u2019s looking back at me in the mirror every day,\u201d says Harries, smiling.<\/p>\n To a large degree, \u201cClayface\u201d progresses as a character study, one of an actor whose livelihood falls away from him and whose attempts to get back on the red carpet turn increasingly dark. His journey, though, hinges less on vanity than on his relationship with Caitlyn.<\/p>\n \u201cI was approaching it the whole time like: Matt thinks he\u2019s in a romantic comedy,\u201d says Harries. \u201cThe fulcrum of the whole thing is his relationship with Caitlyn Corr. Without that, you don\u2019t get the propulsion for Matt to be doing what he decides he needs to.\u201d<\/p>\n Shape-shifting in genre and body <\/p>\n As \u201cClayface\u201d devolves, Matt\u2019s face and body increasingly shape-shift in chilling body horror transformations. That can include his own body changing or Matt taking the form of other characters around him. While CGI and visual effects were used, Watkins leaned into practical effects.<\/p>\n \u201cI like horror when it\u2019s most relatable, when it actually gets under the skin,\u201d Watkins says.<\/p>\n In the third act of \u201cClayface,\u201d that\u2019s taken to body-changing extremes as Matt dons the appearance of those around him. Often, actors were swapping into scenes moment to moment with Harries.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019d often play a scene with Tom and then someone else would play the same scene,\u201d says Watkins. \u201cSometimes Tom would copy them, sometimes they would copy Tom.\u201d<\/p>\n If the superhero movie has sometimes been too rigidly formulaic, \u201cClayface\u201d proves the genre has more elasticity than it\u2019s been shown to have. In \u201cClayface,\u201d even the lead role was an ensemble piece. <\/p>\n \u201cI won\u2019t mention any actor\u2019s name because it\u2019s a bit of a spoiler,\u201d Watkins says. \u201cBut one of the cast members was saying to me his son asked, \u2018So who are you in the movie?\u2019 And he said, \u2018I\u2019m Clayface.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The dominant movie genres of the past decade, superhero films and horror, have usually…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":632803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[156,409,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-632802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/632803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Can](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/f4a17410014a08912f7a7037405884798b1a1424f017f7eeb00a970dad621a7f.jpg\" "\\"Can")
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Tom Rhys Harries in a scene from \u201cClayface.\u201d (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)<\/p>\n![\"Can](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/e644b0ea7cbf61b9ae34e17849f1724171ed70db79233fca49ecc2001302a32c.jpg\" "\\"Can")
Peter Safran, left, and James Gunn arrive at the premiere of \u201cClayface\u201d on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, at the Hollywood Legion Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell\/Invision\/AP)<\/p>\n![\"Can](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/72426efb48ef990ca067cbadc228c4aa8c433efd76be8c1552557bbc220e9619.jpg\" "\\"Can")
Tom Rhys Harries, left, and director James Watkins pose for a portrait to promote the film \u201cClayface\u201d on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Birdie Thompson\/Invision\/AP)<\/p>\n![\"Can](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/54fdd21cb9ceb5054ebd038a24d7124218da98b1c7a8bd7fc67ee173aecdd2ef.jpg\" "\\"Can")
Tom Rhys Harries poses for a portrait to promote the film \u201cClayface\u201d on Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Photo by Birdie Thompson\/Invision\/AP)<\/p>\n