DC Studios’ Clayface Movie Brings Aboard Speak No Evil Director James Watkins

It's been two months since we first shared the very exciting news that modern master of horror Mike Flanagan is writing Clayface, a DCU movie based on the classic Batman baddie, for James Gunn and Peter Safran's DC Studios. But while the man behind Haunting Of Hill House and Midnight Mass is on script duty for the malleable miscreant's big-screen debut, it won't be Flanagan calling the shots on this one. As THR reports, that honour will be going to James Watkins, the director behind last year's terrifying English-language remake of Speak No Evil, Daniel Radcliffe starrer The Woman In Black, and 00s cult chiller Eden Lake.

According to THR's sources, Watkins met with DC Studios' co-leader Gunn yesterday, delivering a final presentation on his vision for the film that obviously hit the spot. And while we don't know exactly what fruits Watkins and Flanagan's combined labours will bear just yet, or indeed what the plot of their take on the Batman B-lister will entail, we do at least know the tonal direction the film is looking to take. Flanagan has spoken on multiple occasions in the past about his desire to explore Clayface, a character traditionally mined for scares in the comics, through the genre prisms of not just horror, but thriller and tragedy also. And given the character's comic book roots — first as a failed actor donning dress-up in DC's Bronze Age, and then as equivocal variations on a rising star rendered a, well, clay-faced malcontent by serums, protoplasm, and out-of-control chemicals — it's an approach we're surprised hasn't been taken on screen sooner. (Unless of course you count early 2000s animated series The Batman's interpretation that is — which, actually, you should!)

Due to shoot later this year ahead of a planned 11 September, 2026 release, Clayface — which, all being well, will be the third movie in the DCU following Gunn's Superman this July and Craig Gillespie's Supergirl: Woman Of Tomorrow next June — has yet to be cast (*ba-dum-tsh!*) at this stage. That being said, Gunn has previously stated that actors in the new-look DCU will carry over between live-action and animated projects, which would mean that Alan Tudyk, who voices Clayface in the studio's adult animation Creature Commandos, is potentially going to be the man to fill the tragic villain's mould on the big screen.

With Watkins at the helm, Flanagan on script (meaty, beautiful, utterly devastating monologues ahoy!), and one of the most woefully underutilised villains in Batman's rogues gallery heading for the limelight at long last, Clayface is already shaping up to be one of 2026's most eagerly anticipated releases. Bring it on!