Entertainment

DC Officially Begins a New Era as ‘Clayface’ Debuts at the Box Office

Nairavoice · Oct 24, 2026 · 5 min read

Hannah covers horror, sci-fi, and games at Collider, where she writes news and features, reviews new releases, and interviews the people who make them. She’s helping build out Collider‘s gaming coverage, with Pokémon as one of her specialties. If she isn’t writing about a monster, she’s probably watching one on a tape from her VHS collection.

Tom Rhys Harries gives Clayface something more unsettling than a monster to watch. His Matt Hagen is desperate to recover the face that made his career possible, and every attempt to fix the damage makes his situation worse. The transformation is the attraction, but watching Matt struggle to hold himself together is what makes DC’s new horror movie worth investing in.

That is an effective starting point for a Batman villain who has rarely been given this much room outside animation and comics. Director James Watkins builds his version of Gotham around Matt’s increasingly ugly circumstances, giving the city a perspective far removed from its usual rooftop vigilante. Arriving just before Halloween, the movie now has a chance to draw audiences who are more interested in its horror than its place in a cinematic universe.

Clayface earned an estimated $9.5 million domestically on its opening day, according to Deadline’s latest box-office report. That figure includes $3.5 million from Thursday previews, putting Friday’s additional earnings at approximately $6 million. The movie opened nationwide on October 23, and its early numbers currently point toward a $23 million to $25 million debut across 3,458 theaters. That would put Clayface at No. 1 for its first weekend. A24’s You Can See Everything is currently projected to follow with approximately $19 million, benefiting from a major theatrical expansion after its strong limited opening. The race remains a projection, with Saturday and Sunday business still needed to determine where both movies will finish.

Four teams, four completely different reasons to put yourself in danger
for strangers. This is the roster you actually belong on, what they would want from you, and what it
would cost you to stay.

You belong where the stakes are largest and the personalities are
loudest. This is a team of people who are all used to being the most important person in the
room, which is exactly why it works and exactly why it keeps nearly falling apart.

The Avengers are not friends who became a team. They are a team that slowly and
reluctantly became friends, and you would recognise every stage of that process.
You can hold your own among big egos without needing to win every exchange, which is the
real entry requirement here.
The arguing is part of the method. This group does its best thinking mid-disagreement,
usually at volume, usually in a very expensive building.
When the sky opens, they are who shows up. You would want to be standing in that line.

You have never had the luxury of being thanked for this. The
X-Men protect a world that has never once been comfortable with them existing, and something
in you understands exactly why they keep doing it anyway.

This is the only team on the list whose central conflict is not a villain. It is being
wanted gone by the same people they keep saving.
You know what it is to be the outsider in a room and to decide, anyway, that you will
not make yourself smaller so everyone else is comfortable.
The X-Men are the most genuine found family in comics. People arrive with nowhere else
to go and are never once asked to explain themselves.
You would not be joining for the glory. There has never been any.

You do not want colleagues, you want your people. The Titans are
the team where the friendship came first and the world-saving turned up afterwards as an
inconvenient side effect.

Every Titan is somebody’s sidekick who decided to stop being one. That decision, not the
villain of the week, is what the team is actually about.
You would be joining people who are all working themselves out at the same time as you,
which is far less lonely than being the only one.
The Titans lose regularly. Then they eat together and come back better, which is a more
honest model of growing up than any other team here manages.
The tower would be loud, chaotic, and the first place that ever felt like yours.

You are not asking who to trust. You worked out the answer a
while ago and it was nobody in a cape. This is where you go once you have decided the people
in charge need watching, and that nobody else is going to do it.

The Boys have no powers, no mandate and no funding. What they have is leverage,
patience, and a very high tolerance for consequences.
You are the person in the room who notices the thing everybody else has quietly agreed
not to mention.
This is not a heroic team and it has never pretended otherwise. It is a group of damaged
people doing necessary work in ways nobody would call clean.
You would not sleep well. You would keep going anyway.

‘Clayface’ Has Another Big Horror Weekend Ahead of It

The timing gives Clayface an opportunity beyond its opening frame. Its second Friday falls on October 30, placing Halloween itself on the following Saturday. For a movie that has sold itself through disturbing body-horror footage, that is a useful spot on the calendar, provided its first audiences give others a reason to buy a ticket. The movie also offers something for viewers who want more than a collection of gruesome effects. Harries and Naomi Ackie, who plays Dr. Caitlyn Corr, have the chemistry to make their characters’ dangerous involvement compelling. Matt’s reliance on her treatment gives their scenes an uncertainty that carries through to the horror, with the possibility of recovery becoming increasingly difficult to separate from the damage being done.

Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini wrote the screenplay, following Flanagan’s original pitch for the character. Max Minghella, Eddie Marsan, and David Dencik also star, with Minghella having previously promised the movie would commit to its body horror. The finished movie gives that commitment an actor at its center who can make the suffering register underneath the makeup. For now, the opening-day estimate gives Clayface a lead to defend through the rest of the weekend. Its projected debut would establish an audience for DC’s horror experiment, with the Halloween frame providing the next test of its staying power.

Clayface is now playing in theaters.