From October 22, Clayface by James Watkins will hit theaters, a bold cinecomic horror born from an idea by Mike Flanagan: the DC Comics fandom is wondering whether this film should be included in the official continuity of the DC Universe overseen by the DC Studios led by James Gunn and Peter Safran, or if it should be viewed as a DC Elseworlds project like The Batman or Joker. Some have noted that the doubt is resolved in part of the official press release precisely by Matt Reeves, who is a coproducer on Clayface and, as we know, signs The Batman with Robert Pattinson.
Clayface officially part of the DC Universe, not an “Elseworld”
Usually, the most authorial DC Comics character films—such as Joker or The Batman—are placed among the DC Elseworlds, detached from the continuity of the DC Universe of Superman and Supergirl, to be understood, so to speak. Clayface, however, is absolutely part of it, even though it carries a distinctive flavor—more free and extreme relative to the typical cinecomic standards. Matt Reeves explains: “After making The Batman we began working on the script for The Batman II and started to think it would be very exciting to develop some genre stories tied to the characters of the Rogues’ Gallery, to explore their origins. One of the things that excited me greatly was finding a way to incorporate small horror elements. Mike Flanagan came to me and told me that he has always been a huge fan of Clayface, especially the version that came from the animated series, and he wanted to turn it into a horror story. So we started developing it. And as this story began to take shape, becoming a kind of tragic love story—like The Fly crossed with a horror-thriller—James and Peter took the reins of the DC Studios, and that became one of the first projects we presented. They liked it so much that they wanted to make it a chapter of the DC Universe. And we were thrilled by the idea of bringing this story into the DCU.”
To sum it up, Clayface actually started as a one-off experiment in the style of DC Elseworlds, but as development progressed it became a bona fide cornerstone of the cinematic DC Universe.
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