Clayface trailer leans into the body horror

The San Diego Comic-Con kicks off tomorrow, and DC Studios and Warner Brothers are setting the stage by dropping the first full trailer for Clayface, part of the DC Universe’s “Gods and Monsters” arc.

The film started out as a Mike Flanagan project (he’s the horror master who brought us The Haunting of Hill House, The Fall of the House of Usher, Midnight Mass, and Doctor Sleep, among other creepy delights). Flanagan said he was inspired by the 1992 “Feat of Clay” episode in Batman: The Animated Series, aspiring to create a film that combined body horror with a tragic thriller. DC Studios CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran loved Flanagan’s pitch and brought the movie into their rebooted DCU.

Alas, Flanagan had to bow out of the project due to scheduling conflicts—he’s a busy man these days—and James Watkins stepped in as director. But Gunn has said the final script retained Flanagan’s original story, with Hossein Amini doing some rewrites. The film will feature the origin story of the Matt Hagen incarnation of Clayface, introduced to the DCU in the animated Creature Commandos series (Alan Tudyk voiced the character). Per the official premise:

Matt Hagen’s meteoric rise from Gotham street kid to Hollywood leading man is tragically cut short when a local crime boss’s actions leave him horribly disfigured. Abandoned by his team and with nothing left, Matt seeks out a cutting edge treatment that miraculously returns him to his former self… but also unexpectedly affects his grip on reality, spiraling him down a destructive path of all-consuming revenge.

The original shape-shifting villain from the 1940s was a successful actor before turning to crime, so it’s a nice little callback to the character’s long, rich history. Tom Rhys Harries (Doctor Who, The Gentlemen) stars as Hagen/Clayface, alongside Naomi Ackie (Mickey 17) as Dr. Caitlin Bates, described as a “fringe” scientist and a love interest for Hagen. Max Minghella (The Handmaid’s Tale) plays a Gotham City police detective who just happens to be dating Bates. The cast also includes Eddie Marsan, David Dencik, Francesca Corney, Ruby Sear, and Wil Coban in as-yet-undisclosed roles.

A teaser dropped in April showing a bandaged Hagen in a hospital bed, ending with a shot of the character’s now-putty-like face beginning to shapeshift. This latest trailer opens with Bates asking Hagen to show her his badly disfigured face, covered in a mask. He wants his old life back—the Hollywood golden boy before thugs carved up his face—and he’s hoping Bates can give it to him. She has a radical new treatment involving the injection of a mysterious gooey substance.

Hagen volunteers to be a human guinea pig, even though she cautions, “This isn’t cosmetic surgery”; there could be side effects, and she won’t know how to treat them. “Even if it kills me, I’ll be better off than I am now,” Hagen insists. He is very wrong about that. At first, the treatment seems to have worked, but then his face starts sagging mid-flight, and we see Hagen holding a dopp kit knife in the aircraft’s restroom, presumably about to use it to open his now-blocked eyes. Ewww. His body-morphing condition just gets worse from there, fueling his rage—or perhaps it’s the other way around.

Clayface hits theaters on October 23, 2026.