Clayface is such a great Batman villain and one of my favorite stories that I’ve seen told for the character was in Batman: The Animated Series. Clayface is such a fascinating character and I would love to see a film made that centers around the character, and that’s something that director Mike Flanagan (Doctor Sleep, The Haunting of Hill House, Midnight Mass) has been wanting to do.
Flanagan previously shared that he would be “really keen to do a standalone Clayface movie as a horror/thriller/tragedy.” He later shared that he actually pitched that movie to Warner Bros., saying: "They didn't bite on that one. Though I'm ready to go anytime."
Now in a recent interview with Script Apart, Flanagan talked about his pitch meeting with the studio about Clayface being a horror movie, and that wasn’t the only DC movie that they talked about. He said:
“I went into Warner Bros. to have the meeting about DC. It was a general meeting with [producer] Jon Berg talking about whether there was anything in the DC Universe that I could be a fit for… I really want[ed] to do Clayface. I went in and said, ‘You know, if you want to do some horror-leaning DC stuff, boy do I have a great take on Clayface. I’d love to do that movie.'”
“And then if not, I wanted to talk about Scarecrow and Justice League Dark and Constantine. And I kind of threw everything up there and then said, ‘As a child, I used to dress up as Superman, because that was my hero — Christopher Reeve’s Superman was my hero.’ And the meeting kind of went nowhere. [Berg] didn’t really grab onto any of that stuff.”
It’s a shame that Berg never gave Flanagan the opportunity to explore Clayface in a movie or any of these other DC projects. But, who knows… maybe James Gunn and Peter Safran will let him make his Clayface movie one day!
In the comics, Clayface’s real name is Basil Karlo, “an actor who upon discovering that a remake of one of his classic horror movies was being made went insane and began killing the cast and crew, wearing the mask of the film's villain Clayface, until stopped by Batman. Initially having no superpowers, Karlo joined with a group of other ‘Clayfaces’ and stole their combined powers, allowing him to shapeshift into any forms he wants.”
In Batman: The Animated Series, Clayface went by the name of Matt Hagen, “an actor working for Imperial Pictures, once called ‘The Man of a million faces’, but he had been disfigured in a terrible car accident. While recovering in a burn clinic, he was approached by the corrupt industrialist Roland Daggett, who made him a test subject for a compound called ‘Renuyu’ that he promised would immediately restore his young good looks. In payment, Hagen impersonated people in an illegal manner for Daggett. Hagen greatly resented this, but was forced to comply, as the Renuyu chemical was extremely addictive and Daggett was the sole producer.”
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