DCU co-chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran have discussed the upcoming movie Clayface, confirming its DCU canon status and R rating.
Clayface, a former criminal in Gotham City with the power to change his clay-body to become anyone or anything, is one of Batman’s oldest foes. The first iteration of the character, Basil Karlo, first appeared in Detective Comics #40 (1940).
Last month, DC Studios announced a September 11, 2026 release date for the Clayface movie. The decision to go with Clayface was reportedly made following the success of HBO’s The Penguin series. Horror visionary Mike Flanagan will serve as the film’s writer, with Lynn Harris set to produce alongside The Batman director Matt Reeves.
However, speaking at a DC Studios presentation attended by IGN, Gunn and Safran explained why Clayface had to be part of the DCU, as opposed to Matt Reeves’ The Batman Epic Crime Saga.
“Clayface is totally DCU,” Gunn confirmed. “The only thing that’s in Matt’s world, his Crime Saga that he’s telling, is the Batman Trilogy, the Penguin series, that’s in that lane,” Safran clarified. “So still under DC Studios, still under us. We have an incredible relationship with Matt, but those are the only things.
“It was important that Clayface be part of the DCU. It’s an origin story for a classic Batman villain that we want to have in our world.”
Gunn then said Clayface wouldn’t have been a great fit for the more grounded The Batman Epic Crime Saga.
“It was very outside of the grounded non-super metahuman characters in Matt’s world,” Gunn said.
Safran confirmed DC Studios is currently in negotiations with Speak No Evil helmer James Watkins to direct Clayface, but it sounds like a done deal. Shooting is set to kick off this summer.
“This summer, cameras are going to roll on Clayface, an incredible body horror film that reveals a compelling origin of a classic Batman villain, and this is another title that we added to the slate on the strength of an exceptional screenplay by Mike Flanagan,” Safran said.
“I think some of you are probably aware that we’re in negotiations with James Watkins now to direct, and we’ll start casting this as soon as we have the director deal done and we’ll shoot this summer. It’s slated for a fall 2026 release. Clayface might not be as widely known as The Penguin or The Joker, but we really feel that his story is equally resonant, compelling, and in many ways, more terrifying than one of those.”
At various points in the DC Studios presentation, Safran called Clayface “experimental” in the sense that it is not “your traditional superhero tentpole movie,” and an “indie style chiller.” Gunn called Clayface “pure f***ing horror, like, totally real. Their version of that movie, it is so real and true and psychological and body horror and gross.”
Gunn confirmed Clayface is, perhaps unsurprisingly, “definitely R rated.”
“I think that one of the things Peter and I talked about when we first got the script is if we were producing movies five years ago when we were doing Belko Experiment and all of that stuff, and somebody had brought us this horror script called Clayface about this guy, we would have died to have produced this movie, because it was just a really excellent body horror script, and the fact that it’s in the DCU is just a plus,” Gunn continued.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
