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When James Gunn was named a co-head of DC Studios in 2022, along with his producing partner Peter Safran, he was essentially being tasked with building a plane in midair. His remit from Warner Bros. (which owns DC Comics and its entertainment rights) was to clear away the dregs of its most recent efforts to create a cinematic superhero universe, quickly reboot things with a slate of new comic-book movies, and direct the first big entry himself, which turned out to be 2025’s Superman. The studio had spent years trying to play catch-up with Disney’s hugely successful Marvel movies, pumping out films either directed by Zack Snyder or made to suit his darker tone, and although some had hit, the overall project never seemed to find cultural ubiquity.
So with Gunn (who made the hit Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy for Marvel) aboard, DC is trying again. But it’s happening as the state of genre cinema seems to be shifting away from the “cinematic universe” approach. Yes, Marvel’s still making movies, at a slightly more relaxed pace, but the many other imitators have wound down (think of Sony’s flimsy villain-focused attempts at a wider Spider-Man world, Fox’s now-collapsed X-Men universe, or failed efforts such as Universal’s “Dark Universe”). Audiences have grown savvy to the treadmill these series put them on, with each ending teasing future editions rather than providing satisfying conclusions, characters never getting happy endings, and fun cameos by past and future members of the universe substituting for actually interesting writing.
Gunn and Safran, to their credit, seem somewhat self-aware about the problems that can sprout from the cinematic universe. In addition to narrative stagnation, these movies have a sort of necessary homogeneity. Part of what makes the Marvel brand “work” is that super-producer and honcho Kevin Feige has overarching creative control, so there’s a consistent tone—but also a bit of sameness to the visuals, the action, even the humor. Every movie starts filming with reshoots built in and scripts sometimes unfinished, more like the creation of a television show. So Gunn said things at DC would work differently: Movies could be green-lighted only with finished scripts, directors could put their imprimatur on whatever project they were in charge of, and entries in a given series could vary wildly in terms of genre and content.
That’s why Clayface is such an interesting test case for the entire DC endeavor. The leadoff film in this universe, Gunn’s Superman, was a genuine delight, but it was very much a comic-book movie, aimed at the widest audience possible with a pretty sunny, bouncy PG-13 tone. The second effort was this summer’s Supergirl, inarguably a misfire from Craig Gillespie (I, Tonya) that aimed for darkly cynical but felt anonymous. Clayface is at least offering the hope of something fresh. It’s a gory, R-rated horror movie about a Batman villain who seems connected to the wider DC universe in only the slimmest of ways.
The film is about an up-and-coming actor named Matt Hagen (played by Tom Rhys Harries) whose face is disfigured after a brutal attack from a gangster. He seeks experimental nanotechnology treatment to rebuild it and soon finds himself with weird “powers”—sometimes he can shape-shift into another person entirely; other times his features look like they’re melting off his skull. Clayface is essentially a visual-effects-driven body-horror movie with some impressive, gory flourishes; its only real connection to the DC Universe is that it’s set in Gotham City. I enjoyed it, while finding it rather silly, but was a little baffled by its existence in the first place.
That’s because Clayface is, indeed, a member of Batman’s rogues’ gallery in comic books, a big gooey monster that the Caped Crusader occasionally does battle with. But Gunn’s new version of this world has yet to establish who will play Batman (the recent Robert Pattinson movie is not included in it), and there’s no immediate plan to do so. In a way, that’s wise (Hollywood is saturated with Batmen already), but Clayface is a minor-key work that struggles to justify itself.
What worries me the most about the ongoing DC plan is that, ultimately, there may be no way to create a cinematic universe that doesn’t require a level of Marvel-like rigor. Gunn is green-lighting interesting things, and he’s had some decent success on the TV side too: The relatively gripping Lanterns is getting good ratings on HBO Max; the hilarious-sounding mockumentary The People vs. Gorilla Grodd is coming in 2027. But he’s moving at a much slower pace, which makes an oddity such as Clayface feel inessential—yes, it’s a tiny piece of a bigger landscape, but when we see only one or two works a year, that landscape is filling in too slowly for us to get invested. Marvel’s approach of total saturation was overwhelming for many, but there may be no other way to make the grander project feel worthwhile.
An Essay I Enjoyed
50 Unforgettable Love Stories
By The Atlantic Culture Desk
Centuries before bookstores had shelves labeled ROMANCE and fictional hockey players locked eyes across the ice, the love story, with all of its attendant joys and sorrows, was an organizing principle of life—and of literature. The sentiment that another person might “complete” us enchanted both Plato and Jerry Maguire, and the search for that someone, along with the desire to understand why it can hurt so bad, has animated fiction from the beginning. The list below is an effort to name those love stories: novels, of course, but also poetry, plays, and short stories—that we consider to be the most enduring. We asked a jury of scholars, librarians, critics, and authors across genres, as well as many colleagues, to name their favorite titles that were originally written in English. We thought of our own personal touchstones, deliberated over the choices, and emerged with a group of standouts: 50 titles you won’t soon forget.
Coming Attractions
Last week I wrote about the industry turmoil going on at Warner Bros. as it merged with Paramount under the Skydance umbrella, with the storied executives Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy suddenly finding themselves out of a job after a string of misses in 2026. Well, their next opportunity might be arriving very quickly, because Netflix is the next movie studio to see turnover up top. First, “chief content officer” Bela Bajaria was axed on October 15; then her subordinate Dan Lin (who ran its film division) was informed he was out a day later. Lin had been hired in 2024 to rein in spending; a somewhat confusing New York Times profile of him this year said the studio was “done coddling Hollywood,” an oddly aggressive bit of press for a company that’s already struggling to attract top talent because of its hostility to cinema releases.
Now Netflix is seemingly looking to pivot back to prestige, abandoning the belt-tightening that went on under Lin. De Luca and Abdy, who are reportedly in talks to take over, would provide an instant shot of it, given their existing relationships with big auteurs including Ryan Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson, and they are reportedly discussing guaranteed theatrical releases, something Netflix has only just begun to tiptoe toward. It’s already happening with movies such as Greta Gerwig’s Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, David Fincher’s The Further Mis-Adventures of Cliff Booth, and now the KPop Demon Hunters sequel. But could Netflix actually abandon one of its biggest tenets in search of Hollywood luster? To fill the gap being left by Warner Bros. and the merger, maybe.
What Else I’m Watching
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The wide release most worth checking out in theaters this week is Wildwood, the epic stop-motion animated adventure directed by Travis Knight (the company’s CEO, who also directed Kubo and the Two Strings). Wildwood, based on the first entry in Colin Meloy’s Wildwood Chronicles novels, has been in development for 15 years and in production for five, and really feels like a true labor of love. That can be said about every movie from Laika, a stop-motion studio based out of Oregon that made its name with Coraline. The films are all huge undertakings made more for artistic enjoyment than for profit, but Wildwood is especially ambitious, featuring PG-13 action and a two-plus-hour running time. Take your older kids to see and enjoy—it’s a fun modern fantasy as well as an affectionate portrait of Portland, where Knight grew up.
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There’s also Wicker, a sweet little folk comedy that I heartily enjoyed, starring Olivia Colman as a reclusive fisherwoman who contracts a local weaver (Peter Dinklage) to make her a husband out of wicker. And indeed he does, creating a creature (Alexander Skarsgard) that looks like a handsome scarecrow and rustles romantically with every step. It has the potential to be a horror movie, but it’s actually a wry satire of patriarchal relations in medieval times (and how, in some ways, things have never changed). Colman is, as always, a true comic delight.
The post Clayface Struggles to Justify Itself appeared first on The Atlantic.
