But when James Gunn and Peter Safran were planning the projects with which they wanted to launch their era of DC Studios, writer-director Mike Flanagan came up with a pitch that would merge both genres.

Neither Safran nor Gunn were looking for a standalone film about Clayface, the lesser-known villain from the Batman comics. But Flanagan’s vision won them over, which eventually became a script by Flanagan and Hossein Amini.

Safran says, “It fits within the broader framework of how James and I saw the broad spectrum of films and television shows we wanted to create.” “But it was really Mike Flanagan’s passion and pitch. You’re always looking for volunteers, not recruits.”

Not many studios will push “Clayface” At the front of the pack, however, Gunn, who pioneered horror, and Safran, who helped launch “The Conjuring” franchise, made “Clayface” — with James Watkins eventually coming on board to direct — as part of their first wave of DCU movies, following “Superman” and “Supergirl.”

“Clayface” marks a darker turn for DC. And, if it proves successful, it could open a deeper path for comic book movies.

“From the beginning, it was not designed to be a traditional superhero movie,” Safran says. “It was always meant to be a character-driven story that utilizes the DC mythology. If you took the DC elements out of it, it would be a great horror movie.”

This makes “Clayface” somewhat unusual in the normally calculated scope of superhero films. It’s R-rated. Its budget is a modest $40 million. And it stars relatively unknown Tom Rice as Harries, a little-known DC villain.

“A lot of people may not know who Clayface is, but they don’t need to,” says Watkins, the Welsh filmmaker behind “Speak No Evil” and “The Woman in Black.” “It’s its own movie.”

Safran says this is by design. He and Gunn have emphasized filmmaker-first projects at DC, carving out a more distinct, multi-genre path that has won them fans but also added a degree of risk.

“Clayface,” which hits theaters Oct. 22, follows Skydance and David Ellison’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Ellison is keeping Gunn and Safran to lead DC, even though “Supergirl” is a disappointing box-office performer. This puts more pressure on “Clayface” to perform.

“If you look at the cumulative choices we’ve made, I think it’s pretty clear that we’re trying to do things differently,” Safran says. “Not everything is going to work. The pressure we feel for ‘Clayface’ is honestly the pressure we feel for everything we put out into the world.”

There have been a few movies that meld horror and superheroes together, including Wes Craven’s “Swamp Thing,” Sam Raimi’s “Darkman” and “Brightburn,” a sinister twist on the “Superman” origin story created by Gunn.

But the Batman villain Clayface, created in 1940 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, is still an unlikely character to take center stage. In the comics, he debuted as Basil Carlo, a B-list actor who, angry that he was not cast in a horror remake in which he had previously starred, dons the film’s Clayface costume to kill the film’s actors.

Some fan skepticism has followed “Clayface”. Last week, Gunn defended his choice on the social media platform Threads when a user asked, “Who said no to the ‘Clayface’ movie?”

Gunn replied: “Although it may seem like it, Hollywood is not a place where the only way to get a movie made is for the public to vote on which IP they want to see come countless times before.”

Watkins’ film, taking inspiration from the two-part episode “Feet of Clay” from “Batman: The Animated Series”, gives a slight twist to the original Clayface story. Rising movie star Matt Hagen’s appearance is disfigured by a mob boss and he is quickly forced out of Hollywood. After several unsuccessful surgeries, he resorts to an experimental procedure created by scientist Dr. Caitlyn Corr, which uses an unused, clay-like living organism to rejuvenate his face.

“Part of the joy was being surprised to see myself in the mirror every day,” Harries says with a smile.

To a large extent, “Clayface” proceeds as a character study, of an actor whose livelihood slips away from him and whose attempts to get back on the red carpet turn increasingly dark. However, his journey rests less on vanity than on his relationship with Caitlin.

“I was thinking the whole time it was like: Matt thinks he’s in a romantic comedy,” says Harries. “The foundation of the whole thing is his relationship with Caitlin Corr. Without that, you don’t get the motivation for Matt to do what he decides he needs.”

As “Clayface” evolves, Matt’s face and body rapidly change shape and undergo horrific physical changes. This may involve him changing his own body or Matt taking the form of other characters around him. While CGI and visual effects were used, Watkins leaned towards practical effects.

“I like horror when it’s most relevant, when it really gets under the skin,” says Watkins.

In the third part of “Clayface”, body switching is taken to extremes as Matt takes on the form of those around him. Often, the actors were swapping scenes with Harries from moment to moment.

“We would often play a scene with Tom and then someone else would play the same scene,” says Watkins. “Sometimes Tom would copy them, sometimes they would copy Tom.”

If the superhero movie can sometimes be too rigidly formulaic, “Clayface” proves that the genre has more elasticity than it lets on. The lead role in “Clayface” was also a collective role.

“I won’t name any actors because it’s a bit of a spoiler,” says Watkins. “But one of the actors was telling me that his son asked, ‘So who are you in the movie?’ And he said, ‘I’m Clayface.’

This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without any modifications to the text.