Tom Rhys Harries stars as Matt Hagen, an actor who endures a horrific transformation at the hands of a scientist after his face is disfigured by a gangster.

Clayface CinemaCon footage previews the body horrors of Mike Flanagan-penned DC movie

Tom Rhys Harries stars as Matt Hagen, an actor who endures a horrific transformation at the hands of a scientist after his face is disfigured by a gangster.

By Nick Romano

Nick Romano

Nick Romano is a senior editor at ** with 15 years of journalism experience covering entertainment. His work previously appeared in Vanity Fair, Vulture, IGN, and more.

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April 14, 2026 10:20 p.m. ET

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Tom Rhys Harries stars in DC's 'Clayface' movie. Credit:

Jed Cullen/Dave Benett/Getty; DC Studios

Consider this "DC after dark."

*Clayface* footage screened during CinemaCon at a Warner Bros. Pictures presentation in Las Vegas on Tuesday. The upcoming DC Studios title, starring Tom Rhys Harries (*The Gentlemen*, *Suspicion*) as the shapeshifting Batman baddie, emphasizes body horror over your more classical comic-book-based offering.

Written by Mike Flanagan (various Stephen King adaptations), directed by James Watkins (*Speak No Evil*, *The Woman in Black*), and produced by *The Batman* filmmaker Matt Reeves, *Clayface* centers around the character of Matt Hagen. When the budding actor's face becomes disfigured by a gangster, the aspiring Hollywood talent seeks aid from a shady scientist (*Mickey 17*'s Naomi Ackie).

The experiment will turn him into the Clayface we know from DC Comics: a figure from the Dark Knight's classic rogues' gallery of villains who can transform his clay body into anyone and anything he can think of.

The CinemaCon teaser opens with a shot of the title character as he wakes up in a hospital bed with bandages, as you'd expect, all over his face.

That shot is intercut with quick flashes of images from Clayface's past, including glossier shots of him seemingly enjoying a bit of Hollywood fame. We also see him wearing a plastic mask (think Tom Cruise in *Vanilla Sky*) and some gnarly injections before we glimpse the flesh of his face melting.

The teaser then transitions into various rapid-fire shots of the main character in peril: running through an alley with his face intact, skin morphing to cover one of his eye sockets, a fist punching a mirror, a Gotham City police car, and flesh moving to cover the area where his mouth should be.

The final image of the trailer shows Harries sitting in a bathtub, with his normal pre-experiment features—until he wipes his hand across his face, causing his eyes, nose, and mouth to disappear entirely.

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In a June 2025 interview with **, James Gunn, co-head of DC Studios with Peter Safran, confirmed *Clayface* as part of the continuity of the main DCU (*Superman*, *Peacemaker*, etc.).

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"I think it was just we needed DCU content," he said at the time. "Mike Flanagan is somebody who I've been friendly with for a long time, and he wrote me about Clayface. He texted me about it really early on in my DC journey. Just being honest, I did not think that was something that was going to happen, but he came in, and he pitched the idea, and I was like, 'Oh s---! That's cool.' It's a body-horror movie. It's a horror movie that, like any cool body-horror movie, just happens to be in the DCU. And then he wrote the script, and the script was fantastic. We did not plan to do *Clayface*. That was really something he brought to us."

Flanagan previously named the "Feat of Clay" arc of *Batman: The Animated Series*, which featured Ron Perlman as the voice of Clayface, as an inspiration for his movie.

*Clayface* is set to release this Sept. 11. It will be the third major DC Studios project released this year, following the *Supergirl* movie on June 26 and HBO's *Lanterns* drama series sometime in August.

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