DCU co-chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran have provided exciting updates on the upcoming movie "Clayface," confirming its status within the DCU canon and its R rating. Clayface, known for his ability to shapeshift his clay-like body into anyone or anything, is a longstanding adversary of Batman. The character, first introduced as Basil Karlo in Detective Comics #40 (1940), has been a staple in Gotham City's criminal underworld.

DC Studios announced last month that "Clayface" is slated for a September 11, 2026 release. The project gained traction following the success of HBO's "The Penguin" series. Horror maestro Mike Flanagan is set to pen the screenplay, with Lynn Harris and "The Batman" director Matt Reeves attached as producers.

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During a recent DC Studios presentation attended by IGN, Gunn and Safran elaborated on why "Clayface" fits into the broader DCU rather than Matt Reeves' more grounded "The Batman Epic Crime Saga." "Clayface is totally DCU," Gunn stated. Safran added, "The only thing that's in Matt's world, his Crime Saga that he's telling, is the Batman Trilogy, the Penguin series, that's in that lane. So still under DC Studios, still under us. We have an incredible relationship with Matt, but those are the only things."

Gunn emphasized the importance of including Clayface in the DCU: "It was important that Clayface be part of the DCU. It's an origin story for a classic Batman villain that we want to have in our world." He also noted that Clayface's fantastical nature wouldn't mesh well with the more realistic tone of Reeves' saga: "It was very outside of the grounded non-super metahuman characters in Matt's world."

Safran revealed that DC Studios is currently negotiating with James Watkins, the director of "Speak No Evil," to helm "Clayface." The film's production is expected to begin this summer. "This summer, cameras are going to roll on Clayface, an incredible body horror film that reveals a compelling origin of a classic Batman villain, and this is another title that we added to the slate on the strength of an exceptional screenplay by Mike Flanagan," Safran said.

Safran described "Clayface" as an "experimental" film, diverging from the typical superhero blockbuster by embracing an "indie style chiller" approach. Gunn echoed this sentiment, calling it "pure f\*\*\*ing horror, like, totally real. Their version of that movie, it is so real and true and psychological and body horror and gross."

Confirming the film's mature rating, Gunn stated, "Clayface is, perhaps unsurprisingly, 'definitely R rated.'" He further expressed enthusiasm for the project, drawing comparisons to their earlier work: "I think that one of the things Peter and I talked about when we first got the script is if we were producing movies five years ago when we were doing Belko Experiment and all of that stuff, and somebody had brought us this horror script called Clayface about this guy, we would have died to have produced this movie, because it was just a really excellent body horror script, and the fact that it's in the DCU is just a plus."