DC Spent Less Than a Quarter of Supergirl's Budget on Clayface and Made It Rated R. The First Reactions Call It Brutal. Here Is What to Expect.

The first reactions to Clayface went up after Tuesday's premiere in Los Angeles, and the word that kept coming back was brutal. Collider's Steven Weintraub called it "hard R and loaded with brutal scenes that really surprised me." Brandon Davis called it "freakishly awesome." For a superhero studio, that is a strange thing to want people saying. Here it is the whole pitch.

The stakes are unusual, too. The new DC Universe's last movie, Supergirl, cost somewhere between $170 million and $186 million and, by trade estimates, lost Warner Bros. about $100 million. Clayface cost a reported $40 million, less than a quarter of that, and it is the first R-rated film in James Gunn and Peter Safran's rebooted universe. It opens Friday, October 23, with previews Thursday night, and runs 108 minutes. Here is what to expect.

The story: a movie star loses his face

Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a Gotham street kid who has made it all the way to Hollywood leading man when a local crime boss leaves him horribly disfigured. Abandoned by his team, he signs up for a cutting-edge treatment that gives him his face back. Then it starts to take his grip on reality, his body turns to living clay, and the story turns to revenge.

Naomi Ackie plays Dr. Caitlyn Corr, the fringe scientist behind the treatment, who becomes Hagen's love interest. Max Minghella plays John Borrelli, a Gotham police detective who is dating her, so there is a love triangle before anyone turns to clay. Eddie Marsan and David Dencik are in the cast in roles the studio has kept quiet.

The actor angle is a deliberate pick. Matt Hagen first appeared in Detective Comics #298 in December 1961, created by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff, as a treasure hunter who gets his powers from a radioactive pool in a cave. Batman: The Animated Series rewrote him as a movie star in its 1992 two-parter "Feat of Clay," with Ron Perlman voicing him, and that is the version most fans picture. The film keeps the actor and swaps the cartoon's miracle face cream for an experimental lab treatment.

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Who made it

• James Watkins directs. He made the British horror films Eden Lake and The Woman in Black, then the 2024 Speak No Evil remake with James McAvoy, which made $76.8 million worldwide.
• Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep) wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Hossein Amini (Drive). Flanagan was originally meant to direct but had to step away over scheduling, with his Carrie series and an Exorcist film on his plate.
• Rob Hardy, who shot Ex Machina, Annihilation, and Civil War, comes back from Supergirl as cinematographer. Oscar winner Volker Bertelmann (All Quiet on the Western Front) wrote the score.
• Matt Reeves, the director of The Batman, produces with Lynn Harris, alongside Gunn and Safran.

Watkins has been open about his references, and none of them are comic books. He has cited David Cronenberg's The Fly (1986) for Hagen's transformation, The Invisible Man (1933) and House of Wax (1953) for the way he hides his face, and Frankenstein (1931) for the first scarring. Reeves has described the film as a "tragic character journey wrapped in terrifying body horror."

Where it fits in the DC Universe

Clayface is the third film in the DC Universe's first chapter, "Gods and Monsters," after Superman and Supergirl. Gunn has said its events take place before Superman, so there is no homework. Weintraub put it plainly: it "doesn't require any knowledge of DC to enjoy."

The rating is the real break. Both earlier films were PG-13. The MPA rated Clayface R for "strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use," which makes it the first R-rated movie of the new DC Universe. If you have a kid who loves the Batman cartoons, this is not the family outing.

What the first reactions say

The praise from the premiere crowd landed on Harries and on the gore. A sample:

• "Freakishly awesome," with credit to Watkins for getting "creative with Clayface's abilities." (Brandon Davis)
• "Hard R and loaded with brutal scenes that really surprised me." (Steven Weintraub, Collider)
• Harries "brings equal boyish charm and quiet menace to the role." (Peter Gray, The AU Review)
• "The story and some bizarre choices make this an odd third entry for a DCU still finding its identity." (Shahbaz, The Movie Podcast)

The scene everyone is talking about is not a spoiler, because DC Studios released it as a clip on October 9. On a plane, Hagen's eyelids start to seal shut, and he locks himself in the bathroom with a pair of scissors to cut them open again. If reading that sentence made you wince, you have your answer on whether this is a date-night movie.

The box office math

Boxoffice Pro's long-range forecast at the start of October put the opening at $23 million to $33 million. Presale reads since then have pointed both ways, from around $20 million to north of $30 million.

For scale, Supergirl opened to $37.1 million, and Zach Cregger's R-rated Resident Evil opened to $60.2 million last month. By the usual rule of thumb that a film needs about two and a half times its budget to break even, Clayface needs roughly $100 million worldwide. That is the logic of a $40 million monster movie: an opening that was a disaster for Supergirl would count as a win here.

It will not have the weekend to itself. LAIKA's stop-motion Wildwood and Taika Waititi's Klara and the Sun open the same day, and Street Fighter will be in its second weekend. Then Halloween lands on its second Saturday. Our October in theaters guide has the rest of the month.

Should you see it opening weekend?

If The Fly or Watkins's own Eden Lake is in your rotation, the reactions say you are the audience, and Thursday previews are the move. If you need to know whether the story holds up, which is where the doubters have aimed, the full reviews arrive the day before.

Either way, the real question is where it lands. Our DC movies ranked list currently has Superman in A tier and Supergirl in C, and our Batman movies ranked list is where a Gotham villain's solo film has to earn its spot. Once you have seen Clayface, put it head to head against both on Shortlist and find out where the DC Universe's strangest swing lands for you.

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