‘Clayface’ Gets a Gruesome New Look That Shows Matt Hagen’s Face Beginning to Melt
Gotham’s rogues gallery has never been short on tragic monsters, but few are as grotesque as Clayface. The shape-shifting villain sits alongside the Riddler, the Joker and Catwoman in Batman’s infamous gallery of foes. His long-awaited big-screen debut is heading straight for the horror end of the superhero spectrum.
The project has been an unusual one from the start. Directed by James Watkins, the film has a story by Mike Flanagan and is produced by Matt Reeves, James Gunn and Peter Safran. It is officially part of the DCU’s Chapter One: Gods and Monsters.
That brings us to the latest tease. DC Film News shared a fresh ‘Clayface‘ image on X, calling it a “horrifying” new look and reminding fans the movie arrives in theaters October 23. The post had already pulled in around 63K views shortly after going up.
The still is a genuine jolt. It shows a blond man in extreme close-up with a calm, almost pleasant smirk, while one side of his face appears to be sliding away. His skin looks waxy and wet, and the pale blue eye on the affected side is ringed in raw red, which makes the slow, unsettling transformation the film promises easy to picture.
That tone matches the story being told. A rising movie star named Matt Hagen is brutally disfigured, then volunteers as a test subject to restore his original face, only to suffer horrifying side effects that turn his body into living clay. The character’s journey is framed as a fall from Gotham street kid to Hollywood leading man, cut short when a local crime boss leaves him horribly disfigured.
The cast is stacked with character actors. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen/Clayface, with Naomi Ackie as Caitlyn Corr and Max Minghella as John Borrelli, alongside David Dencik and Eddie Marsan. Casting this deep suggests the studio wants the human drama to hit as hard as the gore.
Marketing has been surprisingly restrained, which makes each new image feel like an event. Screen Rant noted that there have been only a few trailers and that the film has been largely shrouded in secrecy, possibly to protect reveals about Hagen’s final form. A still like this one gives fans a taste of the body horror without spoiling the full monster.
The comics side is also revving up. Several DC books arriving in October will carry Clayface movie tie-in variant covers drawn by legendary artists. Elsewhere, Absolute Batman has introduced its own new Clayface design, and both takes lean hard into the character’s horror roots.
Behind the scenes, the production looks lean by superhero standards. Filming ran from the end of August until the start of November 2025 on location in Liverpool and on soundstages at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden, with a reported budget of approximately $40 million. Volker Bertelmann is set to compose the score, which hints at a moody, unnerving soundscape to match the visuals.
The film also has a crowded opening frame to contend with. Eight other films are opening nationwide on the same date, including Wicker, Wildwood and Klara and the Sun. A striking image like this one could help ‘Clayface’ stand out among them.
For now, this new look does exactly what a good horror teaser should. It leaves fans staring at that half-melted smile and wondering how far the transformation will go by the time the credits roll.
