EXCLUSIVE: We are hearing that Sorry, Baby and Mickey 17 actress Naomi Ackie is the top choice for the female lead in DC Studios’ Clayface, about the Batman antagonist.
While it’s still early in the dealmaking process, if she accepts the part, Ackie will star opposite Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries in the James Watkins-directed genre movie. We were first to tell you about Harries and Watkins’ attachment to the process.
Clayface will be shooting at Warner Bros Leavesden studio in the UK.
Word is leaking about Ackie and Clayface at an exciting time for DC. Its first movie under studio label bosses Peter Safran and James Gunn, Superman, is coursing to $409 million worldwide, another comeback for superhero movies. DC is heading to San Diego Comic-Con this week strutting its stuff for the second season of HBO’s Peacemaker.
Clayface is a shape-shifting villain in the Batman comics and got his introduction as part of Detective Comics #40 in June 1940. The original Clayface was a moderately successful actor who adopted the identity of a character he’d portrayed in a horror pic after turning to crime. Clayface has a body seemingly made out of clay and has appeared over the years in films, series, animated works, video games and other forms of media.
Producing Clayface are Gunn and Safran as well as The Batman filmmaker Matt Reeves and Lynn Harris. Chantal Nong is executive producer. The Life of Chuck filmmaker Mike Flanagan wrote the first draft of the script, with additional drafts by Oscar-nominated The Wings of a Dove and Drive scribe Hossein Amini.
The London-born Ackie has landed a slew of great roles including that of Whitney Houston in I Want to Dance With Somebody, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, the Netflix series Master of None, Bong Joon Ho’s Mickey 17 and A24’s Sorry, Baby from Eva Victor which is currently in theaters.
Ackie is repped by CAA, Hamilton Hodell, Range Media and Peikoff Mahan Law Office.
We’ll update you when DC Studios returns our request for comment.
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