Clayface was Mike Flanagan's passion project, and for a time, it looked like he would write and direct the movie. Initially, it was imagined as part of Matt Reeves' Batverse, though James Gunn and Peter Safran later decided to pivot and bring the story into the DCU.
However, with Flanagan busy working on Carrie, DC Studios turned to 47 Ronin writer Hossein Amini and Speak No Evil director James Watkins to get Clayface into theaters this year. Now, the latter has explained how the movie evolved without Flanagan.
The prolific showrunner recently seemed to distance himself from Clayface, revealing he hadn't seen the movie and confirming it was no longer his. Talking to ScreenRant, Watkins said, "The bones of Mike’s script obviously were the reason why I wanted to do the project."
He continued, "He wrote this kind of—I thought it was the tragedy, I guess, the arc of Matt Hagen and the relationship with Caitlin and the idea of how this man becomes a monster. So really, that didn’t change."
"It was more like how to finesse elements within it. And that always naturally happens when you’re developing a project. You learn stuff talking to the actors, things change in shooting, things often change in post. So it was just trying to find the kind of—lean into some of the areas."
"We leaned into a couple of things, for example, with Matt. I wanted to make sure that it was very clear, in terms of him being really relatable up front, that this wasn’t just a story of vanity," Watkins noted, adding that he and Amini shifted focus to making Matt Hagen more relatable after he loses the face that's made him a star.
"[It was] little things like that. So it was just little calibrations all the way along the journey. Yeah," he added, later confirming that when he boarded Clayface, it wasn't clear whether it was a standalone Elseworlds tale or part of the DCU (Gunn has said it was in the DCU from the start, which has been contradicted on a few occasions).
"I mean, what was interesting is it came to me as this sort of [unclear] script and standalone," Watkins said. "One of the things that appealed to me is that you don’t have to have a doctorate in DC studies to go and watch this movie. Anyone can go in, right?"
Watkins also clarified whether the DCU's Clayface should be considered an anti-hero after a recent synopsis pointed to Matt not necessarily being a villain.
"I don’t view him as an anti-hero," the filmmaker confirmed. "Me, Tom, I think he’s ultimately a villain. But then you kind of track someone’s journey and hopefully feel empathy and justification for his actions—to a point."
In Clayface, Matt Hagen’s meteoric rise from Gotham street kid to Hollywood leading man is tragically cut short when a local crime boss’s actions leave him horribly disfigured. Abandoned by his team and with nothing left, Matt seeks out a cutting-edge treatment that miraculously returns him to his former self, but also unexpectedly affects his grip on reality, spiralling him down a destructive path of all-consuming revenge.
The movie stars Tom Rhys Harries in the title role of the cult-favourite villain from Gotham's rogues' gallery. The cast includes 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, with Flanagan also getting a "Story by" credit.
Clayface will be released in theaters on October 23.