At a press conference in January 2023, DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran unveiled their creative vision for the future of the DC Universe. Following the dissolution of the disappointing DC Extended Universe (DCEU), and amid the growing struggles of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Gunn told journalists how their studio sought to dispel the notion of “superhero fatigue” by diversifying the types of stories its filmmakers would tell. “You can’t be telling the same ‘good guy, bad guy, giant thing in the sky, good guys win’ story again,” Gunn said. “You need to tell stories that are more morally complex. You need to tell stories that don’t just pretend to be different genres, but actually are different genres.”
Three years later, the DCU is taking shape, and Gunn’s ideas are being put into practice. Chapter One: Gods and Monsters opened with the animated Creature Commandos, which was followed by Superman, the second season of Gunn’s Peacemaker, and Supergirl. These early entries were all either written or directed by Gunn, with the exception of Supergirl, which still fell in line with his irreverent style of filmmaking (including his distinctive taste in needle drops). But over the past few months, the DCU has started to branch out to other kinds of stories that fit into “different genres.” In August, HBO’s Lanterns offered a grounded detective series that’s more True Detective than Green Lantern. And last week, Clayface became the studio’s first horror movie.
Clayface, directed by James Watkins and written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, joins Lanterns as a DCU project that is distinct in its tone, not just within this fledgling cinematic universe, but also within the entire superhero media landscape. Clayface is a true, R-rated horror film that embraces the unnerving thrills of the body horror subgenre. It’s the first DCU movie that hasn’t featured a Kryptonian superhero, and it doesn’t include Batman, even though the Caped Crusader made the titular villain famous enough to get his own story in the first place. And while it may be hard to tell how Clayface connects to the DCU, it’s heartening that there’s room for a strange, entertaining standalone film like this inside a cinematic universe.
Clayface tells the origin story of Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), a rising actor who’s just been nominated for an Academy Award when his glamorous life is suddenly derailed. After Hagen celebrates the news by partying with actor Mia Torrez (Joana Ribeiro) in a Gotham City club all night, he and Torrez wake up in bed together the following morning surrounded by Torrez’s crime-lord boyfriend Markos Szabo (David Dencik) and his henchmen. Szabo takes out a knife and horribly disfigures Hagen’s face, and Hagen proceeds to burn all of his money on failed reconstructive surgeries and a hopeless court case against Szabo, whose power and influence vastly outweigh Hagen’s. With nowhere else to turn, Hagen undergoes an experimental procedure overseen by Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) that uses nanites to repair his damaged facial tissue. But he soon discovers that the nanites also provide him with incredible shapeshifting abilities, and before long, Hagen uses them to descend on a violent path of revenge.
Clayface may not be the best horror flick or superhero movie released this year, but it’s a fun, worthy departure from the superhero norm that makes clever use of a Batman villain who had never before been depicted in live action. Clayface is surrounded by an ensemble of forgettable characters who never amount to much more than tropes, but Rhys Harries delivers a compelling lead performance as the desperate Hagen, who loses sight of himself among the many faces he becomes capable of claiming. Clayface features a few standout sequences, including a stressful scene in which Hagen attempts to prevent his mucky eyelids from closing shut by cutting through them with a pair of scissors, all while standing in an airplane bathroom that’s shaking from turbulence. It’s one of many instances of the film’s fantastic use of practical effects, which further distinguishes it in a superhero world that’s often rendered via green screens.
Of course, Clayface is far from the first superhero project that has revolved around a villain or antihero, even one who’s based in Gotham. The Penguin and Joker both had award-winning success as dark, grounded crime stories that didn’t feature Batman either. (Let’s just forget Joker: Folie à Deux ever happened.) Sony also made an embarrassing effort to forge a cinematic universe around Spider-Man’s rogues’ gallery in SSU films such as Morbius, Kraven the Hunter, and the Venom trilogy. Clayface thus follows a familiar origin story formula, yet its horror-centric execution sets it apart from those previous projects.
So does its status as a DCU entry. The Penguin starred Colin Farrell, who reprised his role as the titular criminal kingpin from The Batman. That made the limited TV series part of Matt Reeves’s so-called “Batman Epic Crime Saga” under DC Studios’s Elseworlds label, which was established to denote DC installments that fell outside of the main continuity of the DCU. Joker and its sequel were likewise Elseworlds movies that existed within a gratingly self-serious universe of their own. But as Safran confirmed in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Clayface centers on the same muddy, malleable monster who appeared in the fifth episode of Creature Commandos, which is set well after the events that gave Hagen his devious powers of metamorphosis.
The fact that both projects feature the same canonical character is more confusing than anything, as the show’s animated portrayal of Hagen is voiced by Alan Tudyk, not Rhys Harries. The two portrayals have little else in common, and the stories are set so far apart in the DCU timeline that they have no tangible bearing on each other beyond Clayface’s introduction of Hagen and how his alter ego came to be. However, within the world of Clayface, none of that matters—and that isn’t such a bad thing.
Gunn recently jumped into an online debate that a pair of Threads users were having about the film’s ties to the rest of the DCU (or lack thereof), writing, “[The] DCU is just an alternate universe; we can enter at any location or time and tell THAT story. I dislike the idea that individual stories aren't meaningful unless they lead to something else.” He continued: “The Superman Saga starts with Superman and travels into Man of Tomorrow and onward, and contains many characters we've introduced in other stories. But that doesn't mean those other stories only exist to set up what's happening there. I would love people to be seeing Clayface because it's a great, fun horror movie unto itself, not because of where else Clayface will show up three movies from now.”
Gunn’s stance is an encouraging sign that he hasn’t lost sight of his original vision for the DCU, and that the studio isn’t running toward some of the same pitfalls that waylaid the DCEU as it tried to emulate the success of the MCU’s interconnected storytelling. At the same time, it’s also fair to wonder about the clarity of the DCU branding a few years into its run.
Clayface is another dark, Gotham-based crime story that feels like a perfect tonal fit for Reeves’s Batman Epic Crime Saga. The film even references a movie that one of Hagen’s acting competitors in the Oscars race starred in called Before the Flood, which certainly feels like an allusion to the citywide flood that occurred at the end of The Batman. It continues to be a puzzling decision for DC Studios to keep Robert Pattinson’s Batman in his own, isolated cinematic universe during the prolonged wait for 2028’s The Batman Part II while simultaneously preparing to reintroduce another version of the superhero within the DCU. And Reeves’s Bat-saga aside, Clayface’s lack of connections to the DCU and singular tone makes it seem like a prime candidate for the Elseworlds label, which Safran once described as being a potential place for “strictly adult fare.” If Clayface has little to do with the DCU, why not just keep it as a DC film?
Although Clayface might not do anything to build a shared narrative, it does establish a dynamic villain that can be recycled for further use in other DCU stories, while also providing some world-building elements for the cinematic universe as it reintroduces yet another version of the crime-ridden Gotham City. It sets a possible foundation for Batman’s hometown that an upcoming film like The Brave and the Bold could build on. But most importantly, the film prioritizes its own self-contained story and tone over any greater agenda.
At Gunn and Safran’s DCU press conference in 2023, Gunn declared that the DCU is “not the Gunn-Verse,” adding that “what makes it so fun is to see stories that are completely different as the individual expression of the writers and the director that are making those projects … and not about me superimposing something on top of that.” Amid the opening flurry of TV shows and movies either written or directed by Gunn, it seemed as if the DCU would very much function as the “Gunn-Verse” after all, yet Lanterns and Clayface have suggested otherwise.
Through three films and three seasons of TV, the DCU is off to an intriguing, if uneven start. It’s still too early to tell how—or if—Gunn and Safran will be able to connect all of the distinct pieces of this expanding universe, particularly as more projects bring their own tones and storytelling sensibilities with them. Just as uncertain is whether the leadership duo will be granted the opportunity to see their vision through, considering the continued corporate volatility at Warner Bros. Warner Bros. Discovery Paramount Skydance Skydance. At least for now, Gunn and Safran will retain their jobs following Paramount’s recent acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery. However, the DCU’s so-so box office returns so far could jeopardize their job security.
In 2025, Superman pulled in a global haul of $618.7 million against its whopping $225 million budget, which wasn’t exactly the start the studio hoped for with its prototypical superhero leading the way. This summer, Supergirl earned just $126.5 million worldwide against its reported $170 million production budget, marking a significant loss for the studio when factoring in additional marketing expenses. Clayface delivered a $43 million global opening, including $24 million domestically to earn the weekend’s top spot, which makes for an impressive debut considering its modest $44 million production price tag. The film may be able to build on its early success thanks to word-of-mouth and its positive reviews, including a solid 75 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and an impressive A- CinemaScore, a rare feat for a horror film. Even so, I’d imagine those box office numbers seem miniscule to Gunn and Safran’s new bosses after July’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day earned a record-breaking $360 million in its opening weekend before raking in $2.5 billion during its theatrical run.
Next summer’s Superman sequel, Man of Tomorrow, will likely offer a clearer indication of where the DCU’s interconnected narrative is headed, as well as how assured its continued existence may be. But a standalone film like Clayface serves as an encouraging sign that more filmmakers will be able to help Gunn and Safran mold a shared superhero future for the studio that—much like Hagen himself—isn’t stuck in a single shape.
