Clayface Will Show That Gotham City Is Bigger Than Batman

In a few weeks, the DCU will finally take us to Gotham City for Clayface. But don’t expect to see Gotham’s Caped Crusader as we watch actor Matt Hagen’s strange transformation into a shapeshifting monster. When asked about the prospect of a Batman appearance in Clayface, director James Watkins told SFX Magazine, “You’re in a city called Gotham. So I guess you feel the shadow of the Bat inherently.” In other words, no, Batman in Clayface.

But that’s alright, because Watkins is right. It’s not just that Batman casts a shadow all over Gotham. It’s that Gotham City is a rich, multifaceted place, a setting for all types of stories—not just stories about Batman.

Clayface stars Tom Rhys Harries as up-and-coming actor Hagen, whose face gets disfigured by gangsters who catch him with one of their girlfriends. Desperate to keep his career, Hagen agrees to an experimental procedure by scientist Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie), which allows him to restore his good looks—as long as he concentrates to keep from becoming an amorphous blob of goo. As Hagen slips further into supervillainy, his case is investigated by Corr’s boyfriend John Borrelli, a detective in the Gotham City police.

Clayface will be the first movie set in Gotham City since James Gunn and Peter Safran took over as heads of DC Studios, but it isn’t the first time the infamous metropolis has come up. We saw people leaving for Gotham City during the escape scene in Superman, Leota and Keeya Adebayo mention moving from Gotham in Peacemaker, and, most recently, Sheriff Kerry Kane of Lanterns came to Rushville, Nebraska from Gotham. Moreover, we actually spent some time with Gotham in the Doctor Phosphorus origin story episode of Creature Commandos, an episode that featured a shadowy cameo from Batman.

Moreover, the comics have shown that good stories can be told in Gotham without Batman’s interference. The city hosts other superheroes, including the Golden Age Green Lantern Alan Scott and Ragman, to say nothing of interesting figures in Batman’s supporting cast. In fact, the excellent series Gotham Central by Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, and Michael Lark follows various officers in the city and only contains, in Watkins’ words, the shadow of the Bat, with very little of Batman himself.

That series inspired the TV show Gotham, which certainly had more superheroes and villains than the comic, but still managed to move Batman out of the spotlight. Then there was the short-lived sitcom Powerless, which featured office drones working at a Wayne-owned business in Gotham City.

As these examples demonstrate, Gotham can play host to police procedurals, horror stories, tales of magic, comedy, and wacky melodrama. None of them require Batman’s presence to be interesting.

And that’s a good thing, because with the official DCU entry, The Brave and the Bold, still in pre-production and The Batman: Part II delayed once again, shadows of the Bat may be all we’re going to get for a long, long time.

Clayface comes to theaters on October 23, 2026.