"Look fear in the face."
DC Studios (via co-CEO James Gunn) has now released the first teaser trailer and poster for the first DCU horror film, Clayface, which is set to hit theaters on October 23.
The footage, which is set to The Flaming Lips' "Do You Realize??", appears to be a slightly shorter version of the trailer than screened during CinemaCon last week, and shows a bloody, bandaged Matt Hagen (Tom Rhys Harries) in his hospital bed as we see horrifying flashes of the attack that left him disfigured.
We then catch glimpses of the transformation he'll undergo (there's even a shadowy shot of Hagen changing his arm into a spiked mace), and the teaser concludes with the actor lying in a bathtub, as he wipes his own face away with his hand.
"Mike Flanagan is somebody who I've been friendly with for a long time, and he wrote me about Clayface," James Gunn told Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview. "He texted me about it really early on in my DC journey. Just being honest, I did not think that was something that was going to happen, but he came in, and he pitched the idea, and I was like, 'Oh s---! That's cool.' It's a body-horror movie. It's a horror movie that, like any cool body-horror movie, just happens to be in the DCU. And then he wrote the script, and the script was fantastic. We did not plan to do Clayface. That was really something he brought to us."
Check out the trailer and below, along with some 4K screenshots, and let us know what you think.
DC Studios’ first-ever foray into the genre, Clayface is a horror thriller from director James Watkins, starring Tom Rhys Harries in the title role of the Gotham City villain. Clayface unravels one man’s horrifying descent from rising Hollywood star to revenge-filled monster in a story that explores the loss of one’s identity and humanity, corrosive love, and the dark underbelly of scientific ambition.
The film also stars Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella and Eddie Marsan, as well as Nancy Carroll and Joshua James. James Watkins directs from a screenplay by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, story by Flanagan, based on characters from DC.
Clayface is produced by Matt Reeves, Lynn Harris, James Gunn and Peter Safran, with Michael E. Uslan, Rafi Crohn, Paul Ritchie, Chantal Nong Vo and Lars P. Winther executive producing.