Warner Bros released the final trailer for Clayface on 24 September, a month before the film opens in UK and US cinemas on 23 October. It is the third trailer, and like the first two it declines to show the creature the film is named after.
What is Clayface about?
The film follows Matt Hagen, a Gotham street kid turned Hollywood leading man, whose career ends when a local crime boss leaves him horribly disfigured. An experimental treatment gives him his face back and takes his grip on reality with it, and the story turns to revenge. Tom Rhys Harries plays Hagen. Naomi Ackie plays Dr Caitlin Corr and Max Minghella plays Detective John Borelli, with Eddie Marsan and David Dencik in supporting roles the studio has yet to spell out.
James Watkins, who made Eden Lake and the 2024 Speak No Evil, directs. Mike Flanagan wrote the story and the original script; Hossein Amini was brought in for the rewrite and shares the screenplay credit. Matt Reeves and Lynn Harris produce alongside James Gunn and Peter Safran.
What does the final trailer show?
A good deal of it reuses footage from the earlier cuts, including the shot of Hagen reaching for a pair of scissors as skin grows across his eyes. The new material is harsher: a victim pressed into Hagen's body until the man's features surface on his back, Hagen's fists driven into another face until it gives way, his own face briefly becoming someone else's. What stands out is his expression throughout, which reads as misery rather than relish. There is still not a single frame of the finished monster, and Harries has said the final form is being held back until release on purpose.
Why is it rated R?
The MPA rating, confirmed in mid-September, cites strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use. That makes Clayface DC Studios' first R-rated film. It was also made cheaply by superhero standards, on a reported budget of around $40 million, and largely in Liverpool, with Pier Head, Derby Square and New Brighton standing in for Gotham and interiors shot at Leavesden. Gunn pushed for practical prosthetics over digital effects, and Harries performs under extensive makeup.
Where does it fit in the DCU?
Clayface is the third film in Gunn and Safran's Chapter One, after Superman and Supergirl. It stands alone and is set before Superman, and despite Reeves producing, it is not part of his The Batman films. Whether Batman appears at all has not been confirmed; reports that he does not are, for now, rumour.
The commercial stakes are clearer than the continuity. Supergirl opened in June to $37 million and finished around $126 million worldwide against a budget reported at more than $170 million, a disappointing result for the new DCU. Clayface is a cheaper and stranger bet, and tracking reflects that: general awareness is modest, but the share of people who say they will see it on opening weekend is running at roughly double that of comparable horror titles.
Save the date
Clayface opens in UK cinemas on Friday 23 October, the same day as the US, with some international markets starting on 21 October. Advance tickets had not gone on sale in either country by the final week of September. After it, the DCU's next film is Man of Tomorrow on 9 July 2027.
Halidom's Batman editions include Iron Studios' Batman vs Bane diorama and Prime 1 Studio's half-scale 1989 Batman.