James Gunn and Peter Safran have been chatting DC’s upcoming slate, and confirmed that British director James Watkins is set to helm the studio’s Clayface adaptation.
James Gunn and Peter Safran have been in charge of DC Studios for just over two years now, and 2025 will see the pair release DC’s first film under their tenure, Gunn’s Superman.
Gunn and Safran recently gave an update on where the studio is headed. While Gunn and Safran are clearly trying to avoid the Marvel style of announcing a huge slate of films and series and then having to backtrack on their promises, the pair did deliver some exciting news.
One of the new projects discussed was a live-action adaptation of Clayface. The film was announced in late December and is set to hit cinemas on 11th September 2026. There’s still no news on who might be appearing in the film, but Gunn did confirm that British director James Watkins was in talks to direct it, as reported by Variety.
We previously reported that Watkins and Jeff Wadlow were both in talks to direct, but with no mention of Wadlow, it seems that Watkins has emerged as the frontrunner for the gig. Watkins is just coming off the success of Speak No Evil, his 2024 remake of a Swedish horror film of the same name.
Podcast | In conversation with James Watkins: Speak No Evil, Eden Lake, Jon Harris and more
Mike Flanagan is writing the script for Clayface and it was in fact Flanagan’s writing that got Gunn and Safran to greenlight the film. According to Gunn, DC Studios previously had “no plans on making a Clayface movie.”
The film is described as a body horror film, and Gunn assured the audience that Clayface “works as a pure horror movie for somebody who doesn’t care at all about DC.”
In the comics, Clayface is traditionally a Batman villain, and with a couple of Batman projects in the works, this could well pave the way for Clayface to appear in other films as well. As noted elsewhere on this site, Robert Pattinson won’t be playing Batman in Gunn and Safran’s DC Universe, including their upcoming film, The Brave And The Bold.
We’ll bring you more on Clayface as we hear it.
