James Gunn has a blunt answer for anyone asking who wanted a Clayface movie. Gunn defended DC Studios’ Clayface movie after a commenter asked who wanted it made, arguing that a filmmaker’s enthusiasm for a character can matter more than how familiar that character is to audiences.
“Who tf asked for Back to the Future? Casablanca? There’s Something About Mary? Pan’s Labyrinth? Fury Road? Weapons? The Matrix?” Gunn replied. The original comment has since been deleted.
“Although it may seem like it, Hollywood isn’t a place where the only way to make a movie is the public voting on what IP they want to see that they’ve seen countless times before,” he wrote.
Gunn credited Mike Flanagan, followed by director James Watkins and Hossein Amini, with finding inspiration in the relatively little-known character and developing a story he believes is special. “I’d take that inspiration a thousand times over some writer trying to make a buck by writing a listless screenplay about a majorly popular character he or she has no passion or feel for.”
Clayface debuted in comics in 1940 and has appeared on screen before, but this is his first solo film. Tom Rhys Harries stars as Matt Hagen, whose climb from Gotham street kid to Hollywood star ends when a crime boss leaves him disfigured. After his team abandons him, he turns to a treatment that restores his appearance while destabilizing his sense of reality and sending him toward revenge.
Clayface opens in theaters on October 23.
