DC’s next villain film is a horror movie first and a comic book movie second. Clayface opens in cinemas across the Middle East on October 22, 2026. It tells the origin of one of Gotham’s strangest villains as a story about body horror, vanity and revenge, not superhero spectacle.
The story follows Matt Hagen, a Gotham street kid who has become a Hollywood leading man. His career falls apart when a local crime boss leaves him badly disfigured. With his team gone and his career over, Hagen turns to an experimental treatment that restores his face. It also loosens his grip on reality and sends him after the people who ruined him. Fans of Batman: The Animated Series will recognise the outline. That show reinvented Hagen as a desperate actor hooked on a miracle cosmetic, and it is still the version most people picture when they hear the name.
The people making it are the strongest reason to pay attention. James Watkins directs. He made Eden Lake, The Woman in Black and the 2024 remake of Speak No Evil, all slow-building, uncomfortable thrillers. The screenplay is by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, from a story by Flanagan. Flanagan’s horror work on The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass and Doctor Sleep is built on grief, guilt and decay, and those fit a character whose whole problem is his own face. On paper, this pairing is aiming for psychological horror, not a cartoon villain origin.
Tom Rhys Harries plays the lead. Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella, Eddie Marsan, Nancy Carroll and Joshua James also star. Behind the camera, cinematographer Rob Hardy (Ex Machina, Civil War) and Oscar-winning composer Volker Bertelmann give it real craft credentials. Producers include Matt Reeves, through his 6th & Idaho banner, and DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran. That gives the film backing from both the Batman films and the wider DC slate.
That mix of producers is part of what makes Clayface interesting. Warner Bros. has tried villain-led stories before with mixed results, and Joker showed that a darker character study can outperform expectations when it commits to a tone. A mid-budget horror film is a lower-risk way for DC Studios to test that audiences will follow Gotham’s rogues gallery somewhere unfamiliar.
What is still unclear is how much Batman, if any, will appear, and how closely the film ties into the wider universe Gunn is building. A trailer is out, but the marketing so far is keeping its focus on Hagen, which suggests the film wants to stand on its own.
