DC Studios' First Horror Film 'Clayface' Tops Box Office With Rare A-Minus Audience Grade

"Clayface," Warner Bros. Discovery's first horror film built around a DC Comics villain, opened atop the North American box office over the weekend, taking in just over $24 million in its first three days and earning an A-minus grade from opening-night audiences surveyed by CinemaScore — an unusually strong score for a horror release and among the best of any film in the rebooted DC Universe.

The film stars Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, a struggling actor who injects himself with an experimental compound and gradually loses control of his own body, transforming into the shape-shifting villain Clayface. It opened in 3,458 theaters across the United States and Canada on Oct. 23, according to figures published by the box-office tracking firm The Numbers. As of Tuesday, domestic ticket sales stood at roughly $26.3 million and the worldwide total had reached about $47.4 million, against a reported production budget of $40 million — meaning the film had already cleared its cost in its first five days of release.

The movie, rated R in the United States for "strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use," received an 18 certificate in Britain for "strong bloody violence, injury detail" from the British Board of Film Classification, which also lists its 108-minute runtime and Oct. 23 UK release date. In Britain, the film has taken in roughly £6.5 million so far, according to figures Warner Bros. Discovery supplies to exhibitors through its internal title database, which describes "Clayface" as "DC Studios' first-ever foray into the genre."

A Lower-Cost Bet on a Lesser-Known Villain

Directed by James Watkins, best known for the 2024 horror hit "Speak No Evil," "Clayface" was written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini from a story by Flanagan, who had originally been attached to direct before scheduling conflicts with other projects forced him to hand the film off. The supporting cast includes Naomi Ackie, David Dencik, Max Minghella, Eddie Marsan, Nancy Carroll and Joshua James. Matt Reeves, Lynn Harris, James Gunn and Peter Safran produced, and Warner Bros. Pictures distributed.

The character, created by Bob Kane and Bill Finger in 1940, has appeared as a Batman antagonist in comics, animated series and video games for decades but had never before carried a live-action feature of his own. The film reframes the villain's backstory around Hagen as a washed-up Hollywood actor rather than the scientist or mobster figure of some comic versions, built around themes of lost identity, corrosive ambition and the entertainment industry's own appetite for reinvention.

Unlike the effects-heavy, nine-figure budgets typical of modern superhero films, "Clayface" was made for roughly $40 million — a fraction of what DC Studios spent on "Superman" or "Supergirl" this year. That smaller budget lowers the bar for the film to turn a profit and reflects a broader shift in strategy at the studio. In a shareholder letter filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission in May, Warner Bros. Discovery told investors it planned to increase its theatrical output from 11 films in 2025 to 14 in 2026 and as many as 18 in 2027, naming "Clayface" alongside "Supergirl," "The Batman: Part II" and the coming Superman sequel "Man of Tomorrow" as key titles in that expanded slate.

A Steadier Result After Supergirl's Struggles

The opening arrives as DC Studios, run by Gunn and Safran since 2023, works to establish a consistent box-office track record beyond "Superman," which was a hit over the summer. "Supergirl" opened earlier this year to a far smaller box-office take than the studio had hoped, prompting questions about whether audiences would follow DC's newer, lesser-known characters into theaters. "Clayface" — built around a villain with no prior live-action film appearances and no major box-office track record — was seen within the industry as a test of that same question, applied to horror rather than straight superhero spectacle.

By that measure, the result was mixed but largely positive: the opening fell short of the $25 million to $30 million some trade outlets had forecast in the days before release, yet the film's position atop the weekend chart, its quick recoupment of costs and its audience reception gave the studio a more encouraging data point than "Supergirl" had provided months earlier. Industry reporting has also noted that the film's largely British, non-marquee cast — rather than any single box-office star — carried much of the marketing weight, a departure from typical comic-book franchise rollouts.

Critics Divided, Audiences Enthusiastic

Reviews have been more mixed than the box office or the audience grade would suggest. The film held a 76 percent positive rating from 182 critics on Rotten Tomatoes, with the site's critics consensus describing it as slow to start before becoming "an icky and satisfying revenge thriller." Audience scores on the same site ran much higher, at 94 percent positive from more than 2,500 verified ratings, a gap that mirrored the film's CinemaScore result.

James Gunn, DC Studios' co-chief executive and one of the film's producers, highlighted the CinemaScore on the social platform Threads on Oct. 24, reposting data showing that only three horror releases in recent years — "Obsession," "Weapons" and now "Clayface" — had received an A-minus, a grade matched elsewhere in the DC Universe only by "Superman," "The Batman," "Man of Steel" and "Aquaman."

"Really proud of this. … As always, all praise goes to James, Mike, Hossein, Tom, Naomi and the whole gang," Gunn wrote, crediting the director, writers and lead cast.

He noted that the 2025 film "Sinners" remains the only horror movie ever to receive CinemaScore's top grade, an A, underscoring how rarely the genre earns strong marks from opening-night crowds, who are typically more forgiving of comic-book spectacle than of horror's slower, bleaker storytelling.

The grade also lands "Clayface" alongside a short list of recent studio horror releases that have paired strong reviews with strong audience response, a combination distributors have chased more aggressively after a run of horror hits over the past two years showed the genre could draw crowds on relatively modest budgets. For Warner Bros. Discovery, which separately highlighted New Line Cinema's horror slate alongside its DC titles in its most recent investor letter, the result adds evidence that genre films can complement its costlier franchise tentpoles rather than serve as an afterthought.

What Comes Next

"Clayface" is expected to lean heavily on word-of-mouth and a long Halloween-season run in the coming weeks, a pattern common to horror releases that post strong audience scores despite modest opening weekends. Gunn has said the film is set chronologically early in the DC Universe's timeline, before the events of "Superman," positioning it as something closer to a standalone origin story than a direct lead-in to the franchise's next major chapter, "Man of Tomorrow." Warner Bros. Discovery is scheduled to report third-quarter earnings in early November, when executives are expected to give investors a fuller account of the film's performance alongside the rest of the studio's expanding theatrical slate.