Fresh off the success of the HBO series “The Penguin,” DC Studios has officially greenlit a feature film centered around Clayface, the shapeshifting Batman villain, from a script written by “Doctor Sleep” filmmaker Mike Flanagan, according to a source with direct knowledge of the production. Plot details are scarce, but filming is expected to begin early next year.
Flanagan, who first pitched DC Studios on a Clayface project in 2023, tweeted in 2021 that he was “really keen to do a standalone Clayface movie as a horror/thriller/tragedy.” But he is already committed to write and direct a new take on “The Exorcist” for Universal, through Blumhouse and Morgan Creek, and he’s also developing a series adaptation of Stephen King’s novel “Carrie” for Amazon MGM Studios. So DC has been on the hunt for a director to take the reins, and an announcement is imminent.
A representative for DC Studios had no comment.
Clayface, one of the earliest Batman antagonists, has passed through several iterations since he was introduced in 1940, as a washed-up actor who turns to crime wearing the claylike mask of a character he once played. The character’s shapeshifting abilities were first introduced in 1961, and he’s been portrayed in many live-action and animated “Batman” adaptations, including by Ron Perlman on “Batman: The Animated Series” in the 1990s, by Brian McManamon on the 2010s Fox series “Gotham,” and most recently by Alan Tudyk on the Max animated comedy “Harley Quinn.”
The decision to greenlight the project is the strongest signal yet that DC Studios co-chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran intend the studio to incorporate a wide assortment of storytelling tones. “One of the main things I want to establish is that you can do anything at DC Studios,” Gunn recently told Variety while discussing his animated series “Creature Commandos,” the first official title in the new DC Universe. “We can make complete family fare. We can make something that’s for general audiences, like ‘Superman.’ We can make something that’s violent and sexual, like this. … It’s about creating a world in which we can tell the story about, you know, one type of character in different genres.”
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