Contemporary off the success of the HBO collection “The Penguin,” DC Studios has formally greenlit a function movie centered round Clayface, the shapeshifting Batman villain, from a script written by “Physician Sleep” filmmaker Mike Flanagan, in response to a supply with direct information of the manufacturing. Plot particulars are scarce, however filming is predicted to start early subsequent yr. 

Flanagan, who first pitched DC Studios on a Clayface mission in 2023, tweeted in 2021 that he was “actually eager to do a standalone Clayface film as a horror/thriller/tragedy.” However he’s already dedicated to put in writing and direct a brand new tackle “The Exorcist” for Common, by Blumhouse and Morgan Creek, and he’s additionally creating a collection adaptation of Stephen King’s novel “Carrie” for Amazon MGM Studios. So DC has been on the hunt for a director to take the reins, and an announcement is imminent.

A consultant for DC Studios had no remark.

Clayface, one of many earliest Batman antagonists, has handed by a number of iterations since he was launched in 1940, as a washed-up actor who turns to crime carrying the claylike masks of a personality he as soon as performed. The character’s shapeshifting talents had been first launched in 1961, and he’s been portrayed in lots of live-action and animated “Batman” diversifications, together with by Ron Perlman on “Batman: The Animated Sequence” within the Nineties, by Brian McManamon on the 2010s Fox collection “Gotham,” and most just lately by Alan Tudyk on the Max animated comedy “Harley Quinn.”

The choice to greenlight the mission is the strongest sign but that DC Studios co-chiefs James Gunn and Peter Safran intend the studio to include a large assortment of storytelling tones. “One of many foremost issues I wish to set up is that you are able to do something at DC Studios,” Gunn just lately instructed Selection whereas discussing his animated collection “Creature Commandos,” the primary official title within the new DC Universe. “We are able to make full household fare. We are able to make one thing that’s for common audiences, like ‘Superman.’ We are able to make one thing that’s violent and sexual, like this. … It’s about making a world through which we will inform the story about, you already know, one kind of character in numerous genres.”