James Watkins’s Clayface, the DC Universe body horror with Tom Rhys Harries as the disfigured actor Matt Hagen, receives its European premiere at Curzon Mayfair.
Clayface, the DC Studios body horror directed by James Watkins, receives its European premiere in Mayfair at Curzon Mayfair on Tuesday 20 October 2026. It opens in British cinemas three days later.
Watkins, born in Nottingham in 1973, wrote My Little Eye during six years on a writing deal with Working Title. He turned director with Eden Lake in 2008, which took the Special Jury Prize at Sitges, then made The Woman in Black and Speak No Evil.
Tom Rhys Harries plays the title role, Matt Hagen. A Welsh speaker from Cardiff, he trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama and made his West End debut in Jez Butterworth’s Mojo.
Naomi Ackie, from Walthamstow, broke through in Lady Macbeth and played Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance with Somebody. Max Minghella plays a Gotham police detective.
Mike Flanagan wrote the story after years of pitching a horror take on the Batman villain, and Hossein Amini rewrote the screenplay. Hagen is a rising film star whose ruined face a fringe scientist restores, at the cost of a body that turns to living clay.
The film was shot in Liverpool and at Warner Bros. Studios Leavesden.