Mike Flanagan's CLAYFACE Movie Gets a 2026 Release Date
Last week it was announced that Mike Flanagan’s Clayface movie got the greenlight at DC Studios, and now the movie has a release date of September 11th, 2026.
That’s a lot sooner than I was expecting, but it’s certainly welcome news! Flanagan (A Haunting at Hill House, Midnight Mass) is writing the movie, and he is working with The Batman director Matt Reeves and Lynn Harris as producers.
The movie is scheduled to start production at some point in 2025, which means the script is up to James Gunn’s standard and ready to go! As of right now, no cast has been announced.
The Clayface movie’s release date puts it close to the date The Batman 2 drops, which is currently scheduled for October 2, 2026.
Flanagan only wrote the script for the film, and he won’t be directing because he would be working on his Exorcist movie. So, DC Studios is also on the hunt for a director.
Flanagan previously shared that he would be “really keen to do a standalone Clayface movie as a horror/thriller/tragedy.” He later shared that he actually pitched that movie to Warner Bros., saying: "They didn't bite on that one. Though I'm ready to go anytime."
In another interview, Flanagan talked about his initial pitch meeting with the studio about Clayface being a horror movie, and that wasn’t the only DC movie that they talked about. He said:
“I went into Warner Bros. to have the meeting about DC. It was a general meeting with [producer] Jon Berg talking about whether there was anything in the DC Universe that I could be a fit for… I really want[ed] to do Clayface.
“I went in and said, ‘You know, if you want to do some horror-leaning DC stuff, boy do I have a great take on Clayface. I’d love to do that movie.'”
“And then if not, I wanted to talk about Scarecrow and Justice League Dark and Constantine. And I kind of threw everything up there and then said, ‘As a child, I used to dress up as Superman, because that was my hero — Christopher Reeve’s Superman was my hero.’ And the meeting kind of went nowhere. [Berg] didn’t really grab onto any of that stuff.”
In the comics, Clayface’s real name is Basil Karlo, an actor who upon discovering that a remake of one of his classic horror movies was being made went insane and began killing the cast and crew, wearing the mask of the film's villain Clayface, until stopped by Batman.
Initially having no superpowers, Karlo joined with a group of other ‘Clayfaces’ and stole their combined powers, allowing him to shapeshift into any forms he wants.”
In Batman: The Animated Series, my favorite version of Clayface, he went by the name of Matt Hagen, an actor working for Imperial Pictures, once called ‘The Man of a million faces’, but he had been disfigured in a terrible car accident.
While recovering in a burn clinic, he was approached by the corrupt industrialist Roland Daggett, who made him a test subject for a compound called ‘Renuyu’ that he promised would immediately restore his young good looks.
In payment, Hagen impersonated people in an illegal manner for Daggett. Hagen greatly resented this, but was forced to comply, as the Renuyu chemical was extremely addictive and Daggett was the sole producer.
It will be interesting to see what Flanagan’s take on the character will be in the DCU.