‘Clayface’ Movie Eyed by ‘Speak No Evil’ & ‘Kick-Ass 2’ Directors

DC Studios is moving full steam ahead with their Clayface movie, which already has a screenplay ready to go by horror auteur Mike Flanagan and a current release date of September 11, 2026. The next stage of the development process is finding the right director, and the DC brass has two potential names in mind for the job.

Per Deadline, Jeff Wadlow and James Watkins are being eyed for the job, and DC Studios is ready to hear pitches from both directors next week. Other directors could very well be in the mix, but these are the two names that are coming out ahead of the rest. Wadlow just recently directed the horror film Imaginary last year, and his other credits include Truth or Dare, the horror remake of Fantasy Island, and Kick-Ass 2, among others. While some of his horror efforts haven’t been well-received, some of them have become minor box office hits for their respective studios.

Watkins did the impossible recently and made the American remake of Speak No Evil a movie worthy of watching even though the Danish original film has become highly regarded among horror fans. Watkins is also known for his work with other horror films, including Eden Lake, which starred Michael Fassbender and garnered solid reviews, as well as 2012’s The Woman in Black, a supernatural horror film starring Daniel Radcliffe.

Given the fact that Flanagan wrote the script and the two top director choices have mostly worked within the horror genre, it’s clear that DC Studios wants Clayface to lean more in that direction. DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran are producing alongside Matt Reeves and Lynn Harris.

Why Isn’t Mike Flanagan Directing Clayface?

Even though Flanagan concocted the screenplay, he was reportedly never considered to direct the film once he took over The Exorcist for Warner Bros. following the misfire that David Gordon Green had with The Exorcist: Believer. Rumors indicate that the studio wants Clayface to be a horror-thriller that leans into the tragedy of the lead character, who will not entirely be faithful to the Batman comic books.

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James Gunn Explains How Mike Flanagan Convinced Him To Make a ‘Clayface’ Movie

Gunn didn’t plan on making ‘Clayface,’ but Flanagan made it hard to resist.

The character of Clayface was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane and was first portrayed as Basil Karlo in Detective Comics #40 in 1940. Karlo was a B-list actor who began to dabble in a life of crime by using the identity of a villain that he played in one of his horror movies. The second Clayface emerged in the 1950s as Matthew Hagen, a treasure hunter who was exposed to radioactive protoplasm, which gave him shapeshifting abilities. He held the mantle for several decades.

The third Clayface was Preston Payne, a scientist who used the second Clayface’s plasma to create a cure for his hyperpituitarism, but ultimately transformed into a clay-like creature that could only survive by passing on his condition to others. All of these versions of the character became adversaries of Batman in some form, and different variations of Clayface have already appeared in non-comic book media, whether in live-action (Gotham and Pennyworth) or animation (Batman: The Animated Series, Harley Quinn, and Creature Commandos). The character has never had a big-budget theatrical treatment, though, so it will be interesting to see how it all turns out.