UPDATE 10/3: The first opening weekend forecast is in: Boxoffice Pro has Clayface at $23M-$33M, below Supergirl‘s $37.1M start.
UPDATE 10/2: Insiders now say all eyes inside the studio are on how Clayface performs: “Clayface better deliver.”
UPDATE 9/24: Warner Bros. finally gave that waiting audience something to see. The Clayface final trailer is here, and fans are cheering the studio for still hiding the monster.
UPDATE 9/17: The first Clayface merchandise anywhere goes on sale at DC’s New York Comic Con booth October 8-11, including a limited in-universe band tour T-shirt.
Two weeks ago, fans wanted Clayface over Street Fighter.
That lead is gone.
The Quorum‘s new chart is in via Puck, and Clayface dipped to 30 percent awareness and 41 percent interest, down 2 points on each, ahead of its October 23 release.
Street Fighter, meanwhile, made the biggest jump of any movie on the chart after Paramount spent the last two weeks actually marketing its movie.
The dip itself is small. What changed around Clayface isn’t.
From Fourth In Interest To Sixth
The Quorum‘s numbers measure whether moviegoers know a movie exists and whether they want to see it.
Two weeks ago, Clayface was tied for first in interest among October releases, with only three movies on the whole chart ahead of it, all September openers.
Now five movies score higher â Resident Evil, Street Fighter, Heart of the Beast, Godzilla Minus Zero, and The Cat in the Hat â dropping Clayface from fourth in interest to sixth.
In October itself, only Street Fighter is ahead. Clayface ranks second in its own month.
And the drift has been one-way: three charts in a row now, both numbers a little lower each time.
All of it before a single ad ran.
Boxed In: Street Fighter Before, Godzilla After
Here’s the part that should worry James Gunn.
Toho’s Godzilla Minus Zero opens November 6, two weeks after Clayface.
Two weeks ago the two were even. Now Godzilla has passed Clayface on both fronts; more people know it’s coming, and more want to see it.
And its American push is only starting, with a world premiere at the New York Film Festival on September 26 and a New York Comic Con panel on October 10 and a new trailer dropping.
That leaves Clayface‘s October 23 date sitting between two Filmed for IMAX releases: Street Fighter one week before it, holding the premium screens, and Godzilla Minus Zero â the first Japanese production shot for the format â two weeks after it.
Clayface, which lost its IMAX billing, is the only one of the three without it.
The Quorum‘s own notes say Clayface‘s horror-superhero mix is playing best with men under 35.
That’s the same crowd Street Fighter and Godzilla are pulling from on either side of it.
Clayface is getting boxed in on the calendar.
A Poster Here Or There Isn’t A Campaign
None of this is a mystery, because both earlier reports said the same thing: the demand is real among DC fans, but the reach is missing, and Warner Bros. hadn’t turned on the marketing machine
Movie campaigns start around six weeks out. For October 23, that’s mid-September.
Mid-September is here. And so far, the campaign amounts to a couple of new posters surfacing over the past couple of days that look like everything else released.
Compare that to what Paramount just did. A new trailer on September 1, Roman Reigns pushing it to 402,000 likes, Jason Momoa winning Stray Kids plushes at an arcade in Japan, and Street Fighter pulled off the turnaround of the fall in one window.
Clayface got the same two weeks with nothing running and drifted backward.
The floor never cracked, though. Far more people want to see Clayface than even know it exists, the locked-in-fans split from August, the reverse of Supergirl‘s.
Even after the dip, more people want to see Clayface right now than wanted Street Fighter two weeks ago, before its blitz.
The audience may still be there. Warner Bros. just hasn’t given it anything to react to.
Clayface Opens October 23
Clayface opens in theaters October 23, 2026, without the IMAX screens Street Fighter holds a week earlier.
James Watkins directs the R-rated body horror take on the Batman villain, written by Mike Flanagan and produced by Matt Reeves, with Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen and Naomi Ackie.
The reported budget sits in the $40-$50 million range, so it doesn’t need blockbuster numbers.
It’s also the second and final DC movie of 2026, with Paramount already weighing what a DC shake-up would look like.
Our last report said the October field was chasing Clayface. The field caught up the moment Warner Bros. stood still.
The posters showing up this week say the studio knows its window just opened. The next chart will show whether Warner Bros. finally gave that waiting audience something to see.
