Based on a story by horror heavyweight Mike Flanagan and directed by James Watkins, Clayface is the latest entry in James Gunn's and Peter Safran's DC Universe, which kicked off with Superman in 2025 and has continued on somewhat unevenly since. Like 2019's Joker, this is a movie about a Batman villain, but without Batman in it. Clayface is the story of actor Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries), an up-and-coming Hollywood star who is at a career high point thanks to a recent best actor nomination.
But while he's out partying one night, he makes the mistake of sleeping with the girlfriend of a Gotham City mob boss (David Dencik) who retaliates by slicing up Hagen's movie star face. Hagen gets a bunch of surgeries which save his life, but they leave him incredibly disfigured, so he hides his face behind a plastic mask. Without his looks, Hagen's career falls apart.
His agency drops him, his money gets stolen by a lawyer, and he's forced to move back to the Narrows of Gotham City, where he grew up and experienced an unhappy childhood. Hagen finds some hope, however, when he learns of an experimental treatment invented by Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) involving something called nanocells.
At first, the nanocells work their magic and restore Hagen's appearance, but soon his face starts to melt and disfigure, requiring ever more of the treatment. This eventually results in him becoming the monstrous Batman villain Clayface, a killer who can take on the appearance of anyone. Given that James Gunn's and Peter Safran's DC Universe is still in its early stages, many people are expecting seeds to be planted now that will come to fruition later.
Marvel has done this with almost all of its films, and especially early on, those little moments would end up having big consequences, like Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) recruiting Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) for the Avengers at the end of 2008's Iron Man. As such, many people thought Clayface might feature a post-credits scene with Batman or some other well-known figure in Gotham.
Then again, this hasn't really been the case so far for DCU movies. Superman had a minor post-credits scene that was really just a joke, and Supergirl didn't have one at all. In this case, the current DCU tradition continues.
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