Clayface: Casting Shortlist for DC’s Batman Spinoff Includes Sinners, Hunger Games Stars

DC Studios is molding up-and-coming actors into its next leading man. It was reported that the Clayface movie written by Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass) with James Watkins (The Woman in Black, Speak No Evil) directing would shoot in the fall at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden in the UK, and the studio is reportedly reading England-born actors for the title role of the shape-shifting Batman villain.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, British actors reading for Clayface include George MacKay (1917), Tom Blyth (The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), Leo Woodall (The White Lotus), and Jack O’Connell, who recently played vampire Remmick in the Ryan Coogler-directed Sinners for Warner Bros.

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THR reports that the shortlist has been whittled down to three, although the actor who is out of the running wasn’t disclosed.

Clayface, described by DC Studios chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran as “pure f—ing horror,” is slated to begin production October 1. Flanagan recently told ComicBook that he was inspired by the Batman: The Animated Series two-parter “Feat of Clay,” in which the Ron Perlman-voiced Clayface is Matt Hagen, a master of disguise and actor whose addiction to “Renuyu” — a regenerative face cream — turns him into a monster with the ability to shape-change and mold his putty-like body into other people.

“That is the perfect [story],” Flanagan said of the two episodes scripted by legendary comic writer Marv Wolfman (The New Teen Titans) and animation vet Michael Reaves (Batman: Mask of the Phantasm). “‘Feat of Clay,’ Ron Perlman, to me, that’s it. That two-parter knocked me out.”

“The short answer is, that is absolutely what inspired my script,” Flanagan continued. “That is the world I wanted to live in. Batman: The Animated Series when I was growing up was my Batman. As much as [Michael] Keaton was my Batman, The Animated Series really was my Batman.”

In the comics, Hagen was the second Clayface after Basil Karlo, a character actor and makeup expert turned costumed killer in the Golden Age era of Detective Comics and Batman comics. The Silver Age Clayface was originally treasure hunter “Lucky” Matt Hagen, whose exposure to a liquid protoplasm transformed him into a metahuman with the power to mold his body into any shape he could imagine.

Flanagan’s R-rated body horror script is being reshaped in a rewrite by screenwriter Hossein Amini (Drive, Obi-Wan Kenobi), who co-created the AMC series McMafia with Watkins.

“I don’t know what they’re doing with Clayface. I’m not directing it, and that filmmaker will need to make it their own,” Flanagan told ComicBook. “I know that they’re doing work on the script. I’m off doing other things now. I really hope it remains true to the spirit of what I wanted it to be. But it’s not my movie, so I’ll be in the audience with you, anxious to see how it comes out.”

DC Studios has set Clayface to open in theaters on Sept. 11, 2026.