Clayface is set to take the DCU in a dark direction, with James Gunn confirming that the “body horror” movie will have a more adult age rating.
In 2021, Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass) expressed interest in making a horror film based on Clayface, a shapeshifting Batman villain.
He didn’t think early meetings with DC went anywhere… until Gunn and Peter Safran were tapped as co-CEOs. “Clayface was not something that we intended,” Gunn said on the DC Studios Showcase podcast.
However, that all changed when Flanagan gave them his pitch. “Woah, that is so cool,” Gunn recalled reacting, and now it’s in active development as a DCU movie.
Clayface will be an R-rated horror movie
During the podcast, Gunn was asked if Clayface would be R-rated. “It’s rated R, yeah… it’s not anything now, because the MPAA has to watch it, but it’s most likely rated R. It’s pretty intense,” he said.
For those who are unaware, Clayface isn’t just one guy in the comics. It’s an alias used by several supervillains, and as described by DC, he’s a “complicated and multifaceted rogue who oozes in and out of different roles with the fluidity of the mud that makes up his body.”
For example, DC Rebirth’s Basil Karlo is an actor who’s disfigured in a car crash, so he uses a drug to restore his face – but when he overdoses, he transforms into a clay-like metahuman.
According to The Wrap, the film will follow the Matt Hagen version of the character, a treasure hunter who falls into a radioactive pool of protoplasm. He’ll be played by Tom Rhys Harries.
“The thing about Clayface that’s so cool… back when we were producing horror movies [like] The Belko Experiment and all these things, I’m like, ‘If we had gotten this script as a horror movie, not being part of the DCU at all… we would jump at the chance of making [it],” Gunn said.
“It’s just a great horror movie… that’s a straight, smart, fun horror movie in a genre that I happen to love, which is body horror.”
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