Why Clayface is DC's 2026 villain gamble: an R-rated body horror with a $40M budget and no superhero in it

Clayface opened in theaters on October 23. It's the third film in James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Universe, after Superman in 2025 and Supergirl earlier this year. James Watkins directed it from a script by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a rising actor whose face is ruined by a gangster, and Naomi Ackie plays Caitlin Corr, the scientist who rebuilds him out of clay.

Three bets in one movie

Clayface breaks three habits of the superhero business at the same time:

• The rating — it's rated R for "strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use." Superman was PG-13.
• The budget — about $40 million, with some reports putting it at $44 million. Superman cost $225 million, and Supergirl more than $170 million.
• The hero — there isn't one. Clayface is a Batman villain, created in 1940 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, and the film never mentions Batman.

DC built it that way on purpose. "From the get-go, this was not designed to be a traditional superhero movie," Safran said.

Take "the DC elements out of it," Safran told the Associated Press, and "it would just be a great horror movie."

Watkins put it more simply: "It's its own movie."

Why DC took the risk

It started as a pitch nobody had asked for, Gunn included. "I didn't plan on making a Clayface movie," he told io9 in 2024. Flanagan brought him the idea, and Gunn has since described the DCU as a place for "stories that are very, very different from one another, in very different genres."

When a fan asked on Threads who had requested a Clayface movie, Gunn replied that its writers "were inspired by a relatively little-known fictional character," and added: "I'd take that inspiration a thousand times over."

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The timing raised the stakes. Supergirl opened to $37 million and has made $126 million worldwide against its $170 million-plus budget, with a 52% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Clayface came next, with a fraction of the money and none of the usual safety nets.

Supergirl needed to be a hit. Clayface only needed not to lose money.

How the first weekend went

The numbers were modest, and for a $40 million movie, that was enough:

• The opening — $24 million in North America from 3,458 theaters, enough for No. 1, though below Warner Bros.' projection of $25 million to $30 million.
• Worldwide — $47.4 million by October 27.
• Audiences — an A- CinemaScore, tied with Superman for the best grade in Gunn's DCU. Horror films rarely score that high.
• Critics — 75% on Rotten Tomatoes from 83 reviews, with a Certified Fresh rating. The audience score is 95%.
• Who showed up — 73% of the opening-weekend audience was between 18 and 34.

By our math, that opening equals about 60% of the film's budget. Supergirl's opening covered roughly 22% of its own.

TheWrap's Adam Chitwood called the opening "not a disaster," adding that "after 'Supergirl' that's really all DC and Warner Bros. needed to hear."

Gunn has already said what comes next. Asked on the red carpet about the character's future, he said "this isn't the last we'll see of Clayface."

Previously we wrote: Warner wrote off Coyote vs. Acme for taxes. Its Oscar nomination will be Hollywood's most embarrassing write-off