The cast of Clayface is starting to be molded into shape. The Handmaid’s Tale‘s Max Minghella is in final negotiations to star in the upcoming DC Comics horror film. He would co-star with the already-cast Tom Rhys Harries and Naomi Ackie. The movie is set to ooze into theaters on September 11, 2025.
According to reports, Minghella would star as a Gotham City police detective who’s dating a shady Elizabeth Holmes-esque scientist (Ackie). The two of them get mixed up with an actor (Harries) who wants her help rebuilding his face after getting disfigured by a gangster. This results in his goopy transformation into the malleable title character, who has bedeviled Batman in various incarnations for 85 years. Best known for starring in The Handmaid’s Tale, which concluded its sixth and final season earlier this year, Minghella is the son of late British director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient). He is next set to star in the upcoming fourth season of Industry; his second feature as director, the horror-comedy Shell, premiered at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
Who Is Clayface?
Created in 1940’s Detective Comics #40 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, Clayface’s first incarnation was Basil Karlo, a Lon Chaney-like actor who committed crimes costumed as a horror movie villain. A later holder of the identity, Matt Hagen, was the prototype for the modern view of the character; created in 1961’s Detective Comics #298 by Finger and Sheldon Moldoff, he was a treasure hunter who was mutated by radioactive protoplasm, making his body a malleable, shape-shifting mass of clay. Since then, the character has become one of Batman’s mainstay foes, with Hagen and a number of successors battling the Dark Knight; the original bearer of the name, Basil Karlo, has also gained shape-shifting abilities. The character has appeared in a number of small-screen Batman adaptations, including Batman: The Animated Series, where he was voiced by Ron Perlman, and Harley Quinn, where he is voiced by Alan Tudyk. Clayface will be the character’s first live-action appearance on the big screen, but he was previously voiced by Kate Micucci in The Lego Batman Movie.
Clayface will be directed by James Watkins (Speak No Evil), from a script by horror maven Mike Flanagan. It is part of the larger DC Comic cinematic universe that kicked off with the animated Creature Commandos and this summer’s big-screen Superman.
Clayface is set to begin production in the UK in the fall, and will be released on September 11, 2026.
via Collider