New Clayface movie trailer proves it's going to earn its R rating

Jul 22, 2026 - 22:16

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New Clayface movie trailer proves it's going to earn its R rating

Published Jul 22, 2026, 1:23 PM EDT

It turns out that becoming a shapeshifting blob man is not a happy process

DC Studios' upcoming Clayface movie just got a new trailer, and it’s not for the faint of heart. The movie, based on the shapeshifting Batman villain, is described as a “horror thriller,” with mutilation, grotesque transformations, and other unsettling sights in store.

That includes the man known as Clayface taking a pair of grooming scissors to his own eyes while in an airplane bathroom rocked by turbulence.

Clayface centers on Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), a Gothamite who becomes a Hollywood leading man until a local crime syndicate disfigures his face. Abandoned by the criminal justice system and his closest colleagues, Hagen looks for extreme solutions to his problems as he wears a mask reminiscent of the haunting French film Eyes Without a Face. He meets a scientist (Naomi Ackie) who offers an experimental procedure to return him to his former self. Unfortunately, there are some notable side effects, like the whole becoming a Silly Putty blob-man thing.

The trailer also teases the more monstrous form of Clayface that many Batman fans are more familiar with from Batman: The Animated Series and the Batman Arkham games. It's also, apparently, our first real look at the Gotham City of the new DCU.

Clayface will be the next movie in DC Studios’ new continuity, which includes last year’s Superman and continued with Supergirl. The film is directed by James Watkins, who is fittingly known for horror flicks like Speak No Evil, The Woman in Black, and Eden Lake. Acclaimed showrunner and filmmaker Mike Flanagan (The Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass, The Haunting of Hill House) came up with the story and co-wrote the screenplay alongside Hossein Amini.

The project has been in the works since 2023, when Flanagan initially pitched it to DC Films (which is behind DC’s previous cinematic universe, the DCEU), before the James Gunn-led DC Studios accepted the concept.

For those who haven’t been following the minutiae of superhero cinematic universes, an odd detail is that Matt Reeves and Robert Pattinson's long-awaited The Batman: Part 2 won’t be set in the same universe as Clayface and the rest of the DC Universe (DCU). That long-delayed movie and its excellent spinoff TV show, The Penguin, are separate and will likely remain so through the third film in Reeves' trilogy. Considering The Batman: Part 2 isn’t coming out until Feb. 18, 2028, things may be a bit funky when the Caped Crusader appears in the upcoming DCU movie The Brave and the Bold, potentially around the same time.

Regardless of these confusing shenanigans, hopefully Clayface can get back a bit of momentum for the DCU (after Supergirl became a box office bust) when it hits theaters on Oct. 23.