I wrote Clayface off as DC's Morbius too. Its international numbers say I was wrong

I'll own it: earlier this month, I'd have told you Clayface was DC's Madame Web. I bought the comps. Presales reportedly trailed Supergirl, Boxoffice Pro lined it up next to Morbius and Kraven, and the movie's own writer, Mike Flanagan, was telling interviewers it was "very much not mine."

Then it opened to $24 million domestic on October 23–25, first place, on a budget of about $40 million. Overseas it opened with $18.5 million, 43 percent of its global weekend, the same split as Superman and Supergirl, and the "already flopping overseas" headlines wrote themselves.

The overseas turn

According to figures shared on r/boxoffice, Clayface has since added another $23 million internationally. That would push its overseas total past its domestic one, which stood at $33 million through October 29, and make it the first movie of James Gunn's DCU to earn more abroad than at home.

For comparison, here's how the first two did:

• Superman (2025): $618.7 million worldwide, 42.7 percent international, on a $225 million budget.
• Supergirl (2026): about $126 million worldwide, 42.8 percent international, on a $170 million budget.
• Clayface (2026): about $40 million budget, R-rated body horror, a Batman villain who had never headlined anything.

Superman had Superman. Clayface had a villain most moviegoers couldn't name.

The DCU's two superhero movies earned 43 percent of their money overseas. Its horror movie may be the one that flips the ratio.

The genre travels

International audiences never needed the DCU to sell them superheroes. They've had 20 years of those. What travels is genre, and an R-rated The Fly-style tragedy about a ruined actor turning to clay is a horror movie first and a DC movie second.

That's how the project was conceived before the DCU even existed. Matt Reeves said in the film's press kit that after The Batman he wanted Rogues' Gallery stories as "really cool, smaller horror films," and Flanagan brought him Clayface. Gunn defended exactly that kind of project when fans asked who'd requested it:

"Hollywood isn't a place where the only way to make a movie is the public voting on what IP they want to see that they've seen countless times before."

— James Gunn, on Threads

He should take his own advice further. Gunn's DCU should be making more strange, cheap genre movies and fewer classic heroes. Supergirl cost four times as much as Clayface, and Deadline estimated it could lose about $125 million.

Don't miss: Clayface end credits: the Batman rumor, the Wayne Enterprises nod, and whether to stay

What's next

The slate doesn't look like it learned that yet. The next DC movie in theaters is Man of Tomorrow, the Superman sequel, in July 2027, and The Batman Part 2 is on pause. James Mangold's Swamp Thing, a horror-adjacent monster movie, remains in development without a date. Which DC films audiences see next depends on whether Gunn takes that lesson from Clayface.

Previously we wrote: Pinocchio: Unstrung deaths: who dies, who survives, and whether Geppetto is really dead