Clayface is now in theaters, and director James Watkins has addressed some of the movie's most talked-about moments in an interview with Variety, including a brief cameo from Breaking Bad star Aaron Paul that didn't really make a lot of sense without some additional context.
Paul shows up in the climactic nightclub scene when Matt Hagen transforms into his father, whom the former actor did not have the best of relationships with.
"It was like, 'Who can we get to play Matt’s dad?' And I really, really love Aaron Paul as an actor. I know it’s tiny, but I think he was living in Paris, and so somebody said, 'Why don’t we reach out?' He’s such a nice man, and he came in and was just a really good sport and a really fine actor. It’s a tiny moment, and it’s a sort of really an Easter egg, isn’t it? But the idea that Matt’s not his father and sort of thing. It was a pleasure to meet him. He was like, 'Yeah, cool DC movie. I’ll show my face for a moment.' It was very nice of him."
We have heard that a flashback scene featuring Paul was filmed but didn't make the cut, so perhaps it will be included on the Blu-ray's additional features.
Watkins also explained how he decided on Clayface's monstrous final form, which is mostly comic-accurate, while retaining some of Hagen's (Tom Rhys Harries) features.
"I took everything as a reference and tried to choose, because there are so many versions in the comics. We did about 19 different iterations. You want to honor the comics, but at the same time, you want to make sure it can work as live-action because it’s obviously a different medium. The key thing for me was making sure that it captured the emotion, the man inside the monster. I was particularly obsessed with his left eye and the pain and the heartbreak within that and the scream, the quality of his voice. I first responded in Mike’s script to the idea of the tragedy and the journey of his character and where he ends up and going with him."
Though it's clearly established that the movie takes place in the DCU's Gotham City, there are no direct nods or references to Batman. Watkins said he didn't want to get "too cute" by shoehorning in any Dark Knight-related Easter eggs/
"I actually think there are lots of Easter eggs that I probably don’t even know about because the graphics department was always throwing in posters and stuff. What I really responded to was the fact that it was a standalone story, and so for me to read that and then to try and get too cute or crowbar something in that wasn’t merited to the narrative felt gimmicky, I suppose. There was zero pressure to do it. I signed up to a certain story, which I believed in, and I just tried to tell that to the best of my abilities."
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.