Clayface's Final Promo Has Matt Reeves and James Gunn Personally Selling DC's First Horror Movie

LOS ANGELES — When your comic-book movie is two weeks from opening and the marketing play is to put James Gunn and Matt Reeves on camera making the case in person, you're either nervous or you're onto something. The final "Get Tickets Now" promo for Clayface, released October 7, does exactly that — a behind-the-scenes look at DC Studios' first horror thriller, with the producer of The Batman and the co-CEO of DC Studios personally selling a body-horror movie about a Batman villain.

That pitch, distilled to one line stated in the promo, is the whole bet: the filmmakers describe the film as living "on that razor's edge digging into the darkness of this character, but also you have empathy for him." A monster you feel for. That's the movie DC is asking audiences to buy a ticket for, in the middle of Halloween season, against everything else on the calendar.

The story, per the official Warner Bros. synopsis: 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, Hagen 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.

If that sounds like classic tragedy wearing a monster-movie costume, that's the point. According to the film's official synopsis, it's a story about "the loss of one's identity and humanity, corrosive love, and the dark underbelly of scientific ambition." This isn't a superhero punching a sky beam. It's an actor losing his face, then his mind, then whatever was left of the man underneath.

The final trailer leans all the way into the body horror. Coverage of the footage describes Hagen rubbing his face and distorting it, pulling a pair of scissors out to cut open his own eyelids as they seal shut — then learning, piece by piece, how to control what his body has become. It's the kind of imagery that earns the film's R rating, which the MPA said it issued for "strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use." This is not a four-quadrant play. It's a horror movie that happens to live in Gotham.

And it is, notably, the first DC film built around a villain rather than a hero since 2019's Joker — a swing that puts the entire movie on Tom Rhys Harries' shoulders. Harries, the Welsh actor breaking out as Hagen, is joined by Eddie Marsan, Max Minghella, Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Nancy Carroll and Joshua James.

"You are on that razor's edge digging into the darkness of this character, but also you have empathy for him."— From DC's final Clayface promo (via FirstShowing)

Behind the camera is a genuine horror pedigree. James Watkins directs — the British genre filmmaker behind Eden Lake, The Woman in Black, the recent Speak No Evil remake, and the "Shut Up and Dance" episode of Black Mirror. The screenplay is by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, from a story by Flanagan — the same Flanagan whose horror work has made him one of the genre's most trusted names, and who already has a project in the works at Prime Video's Carrie series. Cinematography is by Rob Hardy, and the producers are Reeves, Lynn Harris, Gunn and Peter Safran, with Michael E. Uslan, Rafi Crohn, Paul Ritchie, Chantal Nong Vo and Lars P. Winther executive producing.

The timing is the other half of the story. Clayface opens October 23 — squarely in the Halloween corridor, where horror is already surging this season (see the Halloween horror surge) and where an R-rated creature feature doesn't have to apologize for what it is. It arrives as the third big-screen entry in Gunn and Safran's DCU, following Superman and Supergirl — which means it's also the first real test of whether the new DC Universe can stretch beyond capes-and-tights into genre filmmaking without snapping.

The film will be released only in theaters and IMAX in North America on October 23, 2026, and internationally beginning October 21. No streaming date, no day-and-date hedging — Reeves himself took to social media to encourage audiences to experience it exclusively in theaters. For a movie about the corrosive cost of chasing an image, there's something fitting about a studio demanding you show up in person.