James Gunn already showed fans Clayface’s final DCU design, and he did it nearly two years before the movie arrives in theaters. Clayface is the first DC Studios feature to put a Batman villain front and center, with Tom Rhys Harries starring as Matt Hagen, a Gotham actor whose desperate bid to repair his ruined face turns him into a shapeshifting creature. Director James Watkins wants that creature kept under wraps, confirming the monster’s complete form will stay out of every trailer and poster before release. The catch is that anyone hunting for a proper look at the beast can already find one.
The finished Clayface design already appeared in Creature Commandos, the animated HBO Max series Gunn created and wrote to launch his rebooted DC Universe. DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran recently confirmed the hulking figure from that show is the same Matt Hagen that Harries plays in the upcoming film, and that the movie’s events unfold before the series. That means the towering mass of clay seen battling the show’s antiheroes is the final form Hagen takes on the big screen.
Clayface made his DCU debut in December 2024 in the fifth episode of Creature Commandos, titled The Iron Pot. The shapeshifter, voiced by Alan Tudyk, who pulls double duty in the series as Doctor Phosphorus, posed as Professor MacPherson, an academic planted by Ilana Rostovic to distort the plans of Amanda Waller’s government task force. Team leader Rick Flag Sr. and Eric Frankenstein grew suspicious and broke into the professor’s home, where they found the real MacPherson dead.
The pair confronted the villain who was no longer in disguise, and the episode gave viewers a long, unobstructed look at the villain’s true form. This Clayface is a giant heap of wet, dripping sludge with hollow eyes and a jagged mouth stretched wide across his face, and the design proved as vicious as it looked.
He snapped Flag’s back over his knee during the brawl, and only a massive jolt of electricity from Frankenstein stopped him, splattering the shapeshifter across the room in chunks. Gunn later confirmed the blast did not kill him.
That animated appearance now stands as the only complete look at the creature fans will get before opening night. Warner Bros. released a new Clayface trailer on Wednesday, July 22, just ahead of San Diego Comic-Con, and it teased the transformation without finishing it.
The preview ends with Naomi Ackie’s scientist, Dr. Caitlin Corr, recoiling in horror as something enormous takes shape in front of her, then cuts away before showing it whole.
Watkins is withholding the reveal on purpose. The director pointed to Steven Spielberg’s Jaws while explaining the decision, saying he believes in "the power of mystery" over marketing that gives everything away:
"You don’t want to show the shark. I think people give away too much… I believe in the power of mystery and the power of suggestion and the power of people putting two and two together. I think it’s more fun."
Clayface is DC Studios’ first horror movie and its first R-rated theatrical release, following Hagen’s slide from rising Hollywood star to revenge-driven monster after an experimental procedure warps his body. Horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini wrote the script, while Ackie, Max Minghella, David Dencik, Eddie Marsan, Nancy Carroll, and Joshua James join Harries in the cast.
Clayface's Design Will Look Far More Unsettling in Live-action
Seeing Clayface’s animated form two years early barely counts as a spoiler, because animation and live action play by different rules. Creature Commandos gave fans an outline, a stylized shape drawn in clean lines and a 2D aesthetic.
What Watkins is protecting is something else entirely, a photoreal creature with a more intimidating texture and mass. Seeing this on the giant screen will feel far more eerie than what was shown on TV.
The film's trailer already gave audiences a preview of how unsettling Clayface's design will be in live-action. The glimpses released so far stop well short of the full transformation, but they already rank among the most viscerally upsetting images the DCU has produced.
In it, Hagen’s face droops and sags. His eyes melt shut mid-flight, pushing him into the airplane bathroom with a pair of tiny scissors, prepared to cut his eyelid. Other shots also show him melting inside a bathtub as he gradually loses his humanity. If a half-melted man is this eerie, the complete creature, towering and fully formed, should be genuinely horrific in a way a cartoon can’t fully depict.
Seeing the animated preview of Clayface builds great hype for the movie. While fans now recognize the rough silhouette waiting at the end of the film, the mystery of how that design will translate into live-action creates a unique sense of intrigue that will motivate DCU fans to rush to theaters on October 23.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
