For quite a while now, DC's head honcho James Gunn has been excitedly talking up the prospect of Clayface, which will be the third movie to debut in DC's new cinematic universe, following the big reboot of Superman and its spinoff Supergirl. In classic zany Gunn style, though, Clayface is going to be very different tonally, as proven by its first trailer, which dropped this week.
It's only a teaser, and it's only a minute long, but the trailer makes it pretty clear that the pure horror movie Gunn has been promising is indeed on the way. It'll be incredibly fascinating to see how it does with audiences, with Gunn betting that its freshness will help it stand out from the bland superhero norm. That said, of course, it should hit HBO Max pretty quickly after its run in cinemas starting on 21 October – don't be surprised if it hits streaming around Christmas.
The trailer has no dialogue or voiceover, simply introducing us to the star of the story through a series of short flashes from scenes, while cutting back and forth to his haunted eyes in a hospital bed, covered in dressings and blood. It's fairly troubling stuff, but certainly succeeds in setting a creepy tone, that's for sure.
Tom Rhys Harries stars as Matt Hagen, a promising and increasingly buzzy young actor for whom things start to go very wrong when his face is disfigured by a gangster. Desperate to get his boyish good looks back, he agrees to take part in a science experiment that has completely unintended consequences.
Rather than making him straightforwardly beautiful again, he finds that the process turns his body into clay, and it's not hard to imagine how he ends up on a path to villainy from there. One very interesting question about the film will be whether it gives us an introduction to Gunn's new vision for Batman, since it'll be set in Gotham city and Clayface is a Batman villain.
Gunn has confirmed that Robert Pattinson's version of the caped crusader will continue but without becoming canonically part of the DCU, so that leaves room for another version to co-exist. Whether that works for audiences or ends up feeling confusing is anyone's guess, but don't bet against some big hints being dropped about Bruce Wayne when Clayface arrives later this year.
