{"id":891634,"date":"2026-10-23T05:56:10","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T05:56:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/891634\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T05:56:10","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T05:56:10","slug":"box-office-clayface-counting-3-5m-in-u-s-thursday-previews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/891634\/","title":{"rendered":"Box Office: ‘Clayface’ Counting $3.5M+ In U.S. Thursday Previews"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE: Peter Safran and James Gunn\u2019s DC entree into lower budget genre movies, Clayface<\/a>, is off to a solid start in previews tonight with an estimated $3.5M, if not more. <\/p>\n

\n\tDomestic weekend forecasts are between $20M-$25M, which if that occurs, would deliver the newly combined Paramount-Warner Bros its second back-to-back No. 1 opener at the box office after last weekend\u2019s Street Fighter ($31M). <\/p>\n

\n\tPreviews started at 2PM today for the James Watkins directed Clayface which though based on the Batman villain, is a standalone story about baby face Hollywood actor Matt Hagen, who in reaching for the stars, falls short, kisses the wrong girl at the party, and \u2013oops\u2013 there goes his face. The screenplay by Mike Flanagan in December 2024 got Gunn and Safran excited, and it was off to the races to make this movie which is coming in at a net production cost of $44M before P&A, shot in the UK.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn regards to preview comps, Clayface\u2018s money is higher than the R-rated Sony\/Marvel movie Kraven the Hunter ($2M previews, $11M dismal opening), and not far from the pre-Covid PG-13 DC spinoff Birds of Prey ($4M previews, $33M opening). Next to horror films, Clayface\u2018s cash is similar to Blumhouse Atomic Monster\u2019s Other Mommy ($3.6M previews, $27.8M opening) and ahead of 2022\u2019s Smile ($2M previews, $22.6M opening). How about this? Clayface\u2018s previews are higher than Digger\u2018s $1.2M ($8M opening). Mic drop. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe hope is that the DC movie isn\u2019t front loaded tonight, as all eyes are on the potential hold of A24 documentary You Can See Everything<\/a> following its great midweek business and fantastic $15.6M opening last weekend. That Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim co-directed documentary about Theranos architect Elizabeth Holmes expands to 2,600 locations tomorrow after bowing in 855 sites. <\/p>\n

\n\tClayface glides into the weekend with a 76% certified fresh Rotten Tomatoes critics score which is higher than The Flash (63%), Supergirl (52% Rotten), Joker Folie a Deux (31%), Shazam Fury of the Gods (49%), James Wan\u2019s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom (33%), and almost as good as Birds of Prey (79% certified fresh). <\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"'V<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\u2018V for Vendetta\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWarner Bros. Pictures<\/p>\n

\n\tNote this isn\u2019t the first time in DC movie history that they\u2019ve ventured into low-to-mid-sized budget fare. In the early aughts, there was DC\/Vertigo\u2019s The Losers in 2010 which cost $25M before P&A and opened to $9.4M and finaled at $23.5M domestic. There was also the Josh Brolin-Megan Fox starring 2010 fantasy western Jonah Hex which bombed with a $5.3M opening, $10.5M stateside final next to its $47M production cost. And there was the R-rated Wachowski sisters adapted and produced 2005 feature take of the DC Vertigo title, V for Vendetta, which yielded a No. 1 $25.6M North American opening off a $50M production cost, and a finaled domestic take of $70.5M, and $134.7M global. <\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019re hearing that previews for the Fathom release of Laika\u2019s stop-motion animated title Wildwood<\/a> is around $1M. The hope is that the Travis Knight directed movie can break double digits in its opening. The 100% certified fresh critical score and 98% with audiences on RT will certainly help. <\/p>\n

\n\tWe\u2019ll have more preview grosses in the AM. <\/p>\n

\n\tTonight\u2019s numbers are per distribution sources. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Peter Safran and James Gunn\u2019s DC entree into lower budget genre movies, Clayface, is off to a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":891635,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[18085,88,162108,355314],"class_list":["post-891634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-clayface","tag-entertainment","tag-wildwood","tag-you-can-see-everything"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=891634"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/891634\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/891635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=891634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=891634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=891634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}