It's day two of filming on DC Studios' Clayface, and these latest photos and video from the Liverpool set give us a first look at one of the movie's others lead actors shooting his scenes.
Max Minghella (The Social Network, The Handmaid's Tale) plays John, a Gotham City detective who becomes suspicious of his fiancé Caitlin's relationship with Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries).
Naomi Ackie (Blink Twice, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Mickey 17) plays Caitlin Bates, a biotech CEO who treats Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) after he's left disfigured by a mobster. Despite what some social media accounts are reporting, Ackie is not the actress Minghella is speaking to in these shots.
The photos also reveal that this film will use the same Gotham City Courthouse motto we saw in Matt Reeves' The Batman, "Sic Parvis Magna", which means "Greatness From Small Beginnings." Clayface is set in the DCU and not in Reeves' BatVerse, but this is still an interesting carry-over.
The scene being shot on the steps is believed to feature Hagen and another individual making their way into the courthouse, and the crew seem to be doing their best to keep Harries' face covered on his way back down.
The story will reportedly "center on an ascending actor whose face is disfigured by a gangster. As a last resort, the actor turns to a fringe Elizabeth Holmes-style scientist for help. At first, the experiment is a successful but … well, it wouldn’t be a horror movie if the story ended right there, would it?"
Speak No Evil director James Watkins will helm the project, while James Gunn will produce alongside Peter Safran and The Batman director Matt Reeves, with Lynn Harris and Chantal Nong serving as executive producers.
Mike Flanagan penned the script, but was reportedly unavailable to direct due to his commitments to a Carrie TV series. Screenwriter Hossein Amini, best known for penning 2011’s Drive, was recently tapped to do some rewrites. The project has been given an official release date of September 11, 2026.
Safran shared a few new details on the Flanagan script, noting that Clayface is indeed going to be a full-on horror movie in the same vein as David Cronenberg's The Fly, and more recently, we learned that the movie will also take more than a little inspiration from Coralie Fargeat's body horror hit, The Substance.
"Clayface, you see, is a Hollywood horror story, according to our sources, using the most popular incarnation of the villain – a B-movie actor who injects himself with a substance to keep himself relevant only to find out that he can reshape his face and form, becoming a walking piece of clay.".