DC Studios has released the official trailer for Clayface, and it’s a sharp turn away from the cape-and-cowl tone of the rest of James Gunn’s DC Universe. This is a full body-horror origin story, R-rated, and built around a Batman villain who’s never had a live-action solo movie before.
Who Is Clayface in This Movie?
The trailer centers on Matt Hagen, played by Tom Rhys Harries, a promising young actor whose career is cut short after a run-in with a Gotham crime boss leaves him horribly disfigured. Desperate to work again, Hagen turns to an experimental treatment from a scientist played by Naomi Ackie, a drug that restores his face and his career but comes with a catastrophic side effect: it slowly unravels his grip on reality and his own identity, pushing him toward the shapeshifting, all-consuming villain Batman fans know as Clayface.
What the Trailer Reveals
The footage leans hard into body horror, with Hagen’s transformation shown in unsettling detail rather than played for spectacle. Rather than opening with Hagen already as the villain, the trailer spends its time on the actor he used to be, making his descent feel more like a tragedy than a typical supervillain reveal. It’s a notably different approach from how DC and Marvel usually market their villain-focused projects, leaning into psychological unraveling over action beats.
The Cast and Crew Behind Clayface
Tom Rhys Harries leads the cast as Matt Hagen, with Naomi Ackie playing the scientist behind his treatment. Eddie Marsan, Max Minghella, David Dencik, Nancy Carroll, and Joshua James round out the supporting cast. James Watkins directs from a screenplay co-written by horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan, and the project is produced by Matt Reeves, who previously directed The Batman. That combination of horror-specific writing and directing talent is a big part of why Clayface reads so differently from a standard DC origin story in this first full trailer.
Clayface’s Comic Book Roots
Clayface isn’t a single fixed character in the comics so much as a legacy name passed between several different Batman villains over the decades, most of them sharing some version of a shapeshifting, clay-like body and a tragic backstory rooted in show business or vanity. Basil Karlo, the original Clayface, was a disgraced actor turned killer; later versions like Matt Hagen got their powers from a chemical rather than a curse, but kept the through-line of a performer whose identity gets literally consumed by what was supposed to fix him. This movie’s version leans into that Hagen lineage directly, using the character’s Hollywood-actor backstory as the emotional spine of the film rather than treating it as a footnote.
That choice also sets Clayface apart from most Batman-villain adaptations, which tend to foreground the character’s threat to Gotham rather than the personal tragedy that created them. Framing the story around an actor’s identity dissolving under the weight of an industry that discarded him the moment he was disfigured gives the body horror a thematic anchor beyond just shock value.
Release Date and Why It’s a DCU First
Clayface is set for release on October 23, 2026, positioned close to Halloween after being moved from an earlier September date, a scheduling shift that plays directly into the film’s horror-first marketing rather than fighting against it. The film marks DC Studios’ first R-rated theatrical release under the current DCU banner, a notable swing for a franchise that’s otherwise been building toward more traditional, broadly-rated superhero fare with releases like Superman and Supergirl. Betting an R rating and a body-horror tone on a villain-origin story this early in the new DCU timeline signals Gunn and Reeves are willing to let individual corners of the universe look nothing alike tonally, so long as the story fits the character, treating Clayface more like a standalone horror release that happens to share DNA with the wider DCU than a conventional team-up-building blockbuster.
For more on what else is coming from the DCU, see our coverage of Supergirl’s cast and release plans.
Trailer reporting via Deadline and IndieWire was used to confirm the details above.
FAQ
When does Clayface release in theaters?
Clayface is scheduled for release on October 23, 2026, after being moved from an earlier September date.
Who plays Clayface in the new DC movie?
Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, the actor whose disfigurement and subsequent transformation turns him into Clayface.
Is Clayface rated R?
Yes. Clayface is DC Studios’ first R-rated theatrical release under the current DCU banner, built as a body-horror origin story.
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