DC's third film is a $40 million R-rated horror picture set before its first one
DC's third film opens in three weeks. It is rated R, it cost about $40 million, it was shot in Liverpool, and it takes place before the first one. Mike Flanagan wrote it and is not directing it, which is not how most of the coverage reads.
Clayface arrives on 23 October as the third film in the DC Universe, after Superman and Supergirl. It is a body-horror origin story about an actor whose ruined face leads him to a scientist who turns his body to clay.
It is rated R, and it cost approximately $40 million.
Set that against the going rate. A modern superhero tentpole runs $180 to $250 million before marketing. DC's third film is a fifth of that, in a rating category that excludes a chunk of the audience the genre is built on.
It is the third film and the earliest story
Chronologically, Clayface takes place before Superman, the film that opened the universe in 2025.
Which means the DCU's running order and its internal timeline have diverged at entry three. That is not unusual for a shared universe — Marvel did it repeatedly — but it is unusual this early, and it tells you the slate is being built as a set of films that happen to share a world rather than as a sequence.
The Flanagan credit is a writing credit, and it has been rewritten
Clayface is widely discussed as a Mike Flanagan project. Flanagan wrote the story and the original screenplay. He is not the director.
James Watkins directs. And the screenplay Flanagan delivered was subsequently rewritten by Hossein Amini.
Both of those are ordinary facts of film production and neither is a slight. But "from Mike Flanagan" and "written by Mike Flanagan, rewritten by someone else, directed by someone else" describe different films, and the shorter version is the one doing the marketing work.
What is confirmed
- Release 23 October 2026. Rated R.
- Directed by James Watkins. Story and original screenplay by Mike Flanagan; rewrite by Hossein Amini.
- Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, the actor who becomes Clayface. Naomi Ackie plays Dr. Caitlin Corr. Max Minghella plays a Gotham detective, with David Dencik, Eddie Marsan, Nancy Carroll and Joshua James in undisclosed roles.
- Budget approximately $40 million.
- Principal photography 31 August to 1 November 2025, mostly in Liverpool, with soundstage work at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden.
- Third film in the DC Universe; part of the Chapter One: Gods and Monsters slate.
Sixty-two shooting days in England for a Gotham film, at a budget that would not cover the third act of a Marvel release. Whatever else this is, it is a deliberate experiment in what a comic-book film can cost.
What is still unknown
The runtime, which has not been published. Whether an R-rated $40 million horror film inside a shared universe is a strategy or a one-off. And how a story set before Superman connects to anything after it — nobody involved has explained why the third film goes backwards.
DC has spent a decade being accused of copying Marvel's playbook. Its third film is a Liverpool-shot R-rated body-horror picture about a character actor's face, for the price of a mid-budget thriller. That is not the playbook.