Concept artist Carlos Huante has shared some of his designs for a very early take on Clayface, which he was commissioned to work on before the DCU movie was officially greenlit.
"I did some work on it before it was greenlit and it wasn’t clear what they were going to do with it at first but, it was an origin story and after this image it was clearer it was going to be a horror movie rather the Batman supervillain.. which is cool by me, but I still wanted to go for it with a full Clayface creature. But I was only hired for a week, and even that seemed to be a stretch for their budget. Weird times."
Huante also notes that this artwork was created when a "different director" was on board.
There's speculation that this must have been Mike Flanagan, but as far as we know, while the filmmaker pitched the idea and worked on the script, he was never actually attached to helm Clayface - as much as he would have liked to.
“I really wanted to do it, too,” Flanagan told EW in a recent interview. “Though, when I was developing it, I thought it was going to be later in the DC rollout. I didn’t think it would be the character they’d focus on so soon. But they were eager to get it into production and I wasn’t anywhere near available. It wasn’t ‘Wait six months.’ It was, ‘No, I’m years away.’ So I completely understand why they would want to do that.”
These rather unsettling takes on the title character depict his early transformation, and appear to have taken some inspiration from the "diseased" version of Clayface from Grant Morrison's Arkham Asylum graphic novel.
Clayface came in on the lower end of box office estimates this weekend, but still managed to hold off You Can See Everything to claim the No. 1 spot in North America. The R-rated horror movie took in $24M domestic and $19M overseas for $43M global debut (its production budget was reportedly around $45 million).
Reviews and audience reactions have been mostly very positive, so DC Studios will be hoping that WOM will propel the move to surprise hit status.
DC Studios’ first-ever foray into the genre, Clayface is a horror thriller from director James Watkins, starring Tom Rhys Harries in the title role of the Gotham City villain. Clayface unravels one man’s horrifying descent from rising Hollywood star to revenge-filled monster in a story that explores the loss of one’s identity and humanity, corrosive love, and the dark underbelly of scientific ambition.
The film also stars Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella and Eddie Marsan, as well as Nancy Carroll and Joshua James. James Watkins directs from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, story by Flanagan, based on characters from DC.
Clayface is produced by Matt Reeves, Lynn Harris, James Gunn and Peter Safran, with Michael E. Uslan, Rafi Crohn, Paul Ritchie, Chantal Nong Vo and Lars P. Winther executive producing.