DC Studios recently enlisted Speak to Evil director James Watkins to helm Clayface. Given the filmmaker's horror background (if you've not seen Eden Lake, make sure to track it down), all signs point to this being one of the most messed up comic book movies ever.
The DCU-set project will begin shooting later this year and we now have our first casting rumour. According to The InSneider, Harry Potter star Daniel Radcliffe is one of two actors currently being eyed for the role of Basil Karlo, a.k.a. Clayface.
Radcliffe previously worked with Watkins on The Woman in Black. The actor has made a big effort to shake off the shadow of the Boy Who Lived in recent years, taking on vastly different, typically well-received roles in movies like Weird: The Al Yankovic Story and The Lost City.
We'll see what happens, though rumours claiming James McAvoy was being lined up to play Clayface have since been debunked.
Talking to Cinema Blend about Clayface last week, DC Studios co-CEO James Gunn said, "One of the things Peter and I talked about when we first got the script is if we were producing movies five years ago, like when we were doing Belko Experiment and all of that stuff, and somebody had brought us this horror script called Clayface about this guy, we would have died to have produced this movie."
"Because it was just a really excellent body horror script. And the fact that it's in the DCU is just a plus," he continued. "Then we have Clayface: pure [frick]ing horror. Like totally real. Their version of that movie, it is so real and true and psychological and body horror and gross. It's definitely R-rated."
That rating isn't overly surprising as DC Studios is expected to deliver a mix of PG-13 and R-Rated movies set in the DCU. Whether this decreases the odds of Batman making an appearance remains to be seen.
The first iteration of Clayface debuted in the 1940s, mere months after The Joker first menaced Batman. At the time, Basil Karlo was little more than a deranged B-List actor and killer who dressed up as the sinister "Clayface" character he'd played in the past.
Furious he'd been recast in the monstrous role, Karlo went on a killing spree that saw him target the cast of the film made without him. Karlo eventually gained shape-shifting abilities, but Matt Hagen, an adventurer who turned into a monster after encountering a radioactive pool of protoplasm, is perhaps the most popular version of the villain thanks to Batman: The Animated Series.
In the show, he was portrayed as an actor who used an anti-ageing cream to look younger. After getting on the wrong side of its creator, Roland Daggett, Hagen is doused in a vat of the stuff and transforms into a monster. The third Clayface was Preston Payne, with Sondra Fuller, Cassius Payne, Peter Malley, Todd Russell, and Johnny Williams all following.
Clayface arrives in theaters on September 11, 2026.