UPDATE 3: James Gunn now points to Flanagan’s inspiration as he fires back at the Clayface backlash.
UPDATE 2: Boxoffice Pro now projects a $23M-$33M opening for Clayface, below Supergirl‘s $37.1M.
UPDATE: Insiders say James Gunn’s DCU is far from safe, and Clayface is next.
Clayface started as Mike Flanagan’s passion project.
Three weeks before it opens, the writer says the movie belongs to somebody else.
He hasn’t even seen it.
Flanagan made the comments in a new video interview while promoting his Carrie series, which hits Prime Video on October 7.
‘That’s James’ Film’
The question was how adapting Carrie compares to adapting a comic book like Clayface. Flanagan started with what drew him to the project: nobody had ever put the Batman villain at the center of a movie.
“This was different because Clayface had never been adapted before outside of the animated series and a lot of the animated work, but had never made it into a feature film and certainly never as the central character,” Flanagan said. “And so Clayface for me felt kind of wide open. We were the first to kind of get in and do that.”
Then he drew the line.
“Now that said, Clayface, you know, very much is not mine. It’s James Watkins’ movie,” Flanagan continued. “I wrote a script I loved and I turned it in, and then that’s the last. I haven’t even seen it.”
“I’m excited to see it and see what James did with it,” he added. “But that’s James’ film, and I’m so excited to see what he made.”
The Passion Project That Moved On Without Him
Flanagan first pitched a standalone Clayface movie back in 2021, describing it as a horror thriller tragedy.
He developed it with The Batman director Matt Reeves before James Gunn and Peter Safran got involved and made it a DCU movie.
Then Carrie took over Flanagan’s schedule, and DC Studios kept going without him. James Watkins came aboard to direct, and Hossein Amini was brought in on the script.
The finished movie credits the screenplay to Flanagan and Amini, with story by Flanagan, and Reeves producing alongside Gunn and Safran.
So “very much is not mine” is literal. The man who spent years pushing for a Clayface movie handed in his script, and that was the end of his involvement.
Clayface In Theaters October 23
James Watkins directs the R-rated body horror take on the Batman villain, with Tom Rhys Harries starring as Matt Hagen alongside Naomi Ackie.
Clayface opens only in theaters October 23, the second and final DC movie of 2026.
Warner Bros. only recently fired up the campaign with a final trailer that keeps Clayface’s final form out of sight.
That followed weeks of quiet that saw the movie slip behind Street Fighter and Godzilla Minus Zero in tracking.
And DC sells the movie’s first merchandise at its New York Comic Con booth ahead of release.
It makes for a strange October for Flanagan. Two projects carrying his name arrive this month, and by his own account, only one of them is his.
That one is Carrie, which premieres October 7 on Prime Video with all eight episodes at once. Summer H. Howell stars as Carrie White opposite Samantha Sloyan, with Stephen King executive producing and Flanagan directing four episodes.
