Clayface Stars Take Over London: Tom Rhys Harries, Naomie Ackie and Max Minghella Hit the Red Carpet

London got a proper taste of Gotham on Monday night. The stars of Clayface — the DC Studios horror thriller that’s had comic book fans buzzing for months — stepped out for a special screening at Vue Leicester Square on October 19, and they did not come quietly. Leading man Tom Rhys Harries was joined on the red carpet by co-stars Naomie Ackie and Max Minghella, along with director James Watkins, as the countdown to the film’s October 23 release hit its final stretch.

It was a full day for the cast. Earlier on Monday, the four of them fronted a photocall at the Leake Street Arches, the graffiti tunnel venue that had been given a full Clayface-inspired makeover for the occasion. And just last week, Harries, Ackie, and Watkins were across the Atlantic for the movie’s world premiere in Los Angeles. Two premieres in two countries in seven days. That’s what a global press tour looks like in the final furlong.

DC’s boldest swing yet

Here’s the thing that makes Clayface genuinely interesting, not just another date on the superhero calendar. This is DC Studios’ first-ever foray into the horror-thriller genre. And it’s R-rated. For a character who started life as a B-list Batman rogue in the comics, that’s a remarkably gutsy call — and it tells you exactly how confident James Gunn’s DC is feeling about letting filmmakers actually make films, not content.

The story centers on Matt Hagen, played by Harries. Hagen’s a Gotham street kid who claws his way up to become a Hollywood leading man — the dream, right? — only to have it all ripped away when a local crime boss leaves him horribly disfigured. Abandoned by everyone around him, Hagen turns to a cutting-edge treatment that miraculously restores his looks. The catch? It also fractures his grip on reality, sending him spiraling down a path of all-consuming revenge.

Honestly, it’s a premise that reads like it was built for horror. Vanity, identity, the terror of losing your own face — there’s real psychological meat on these bones. The film’s official logline describes it as “one man’s horrifying descent from rising Hollywood star to revenge-filled monster,” exploring the loss of identity and humanity, corrosive love, and the dark underbelly of scientific ambition. That’s not your typical capes-and-quips pitch.

The creative team is stacked

Behind the camera, Clayface has the kind of pedigree that makes horror fans sit up. James Watkins directs — and if that name rings a bell, it should. He made Eden Lake, the British horror film that still shows up on “most disturbing movies” lists, along with The Woman in Black and last year’s Speak No Evil. The man knows how to make an audience deeply uncomfortable. Handing him a shape-shifting monster with an identity crisis feels like a perfect match.

Then there’s the script, from Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, based on a story by Flanagan. Flanagan is, without much argument, one of the defining horror voices of the last decade — The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep, Midnight Mass. His involvement alone signals that this isn’t a superhero movie wearing a horror costume. It’s the other way around.

The producing lineup is heavyweight too: Matt Reeves, Lynn Harris, James Gunn, and Peter Safran. Reeves producing a Gotham-adjacent villain story has a nice symmetry to it. And the music comes from Volker Bertelmann, the Oscar-winning composer whose scores always seem to crawl under your skin. Tickets are already on sale, and the trailers have been leaning hard into body horror — dripping, stretching, cracking. This is a film that wants you in the biggest theater you can find, ideally IMAX.

Meet the cast

Tom Rhys Harries, 36, carries the whole thing as Matt Hagen, and landing this role is genuinely a career-defining moment for the Welsh actor. He’s been a steadily rising presence on British and American screens — sharp-eyed viewers will know him from Apple TV+’s Suspicion and Netflix’s White Lines — but Clayface is the kind of part that changes the conversation around an actor overnight. Playing a character who is literally losing himself, piece by piece, is a showcase role if there ever was one.

Naomie Ackie, meanwhile, needs little introduction at this point. The British actress has had a remarkable run: she played Whitney Houston in Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody, held her own in Bong Joon-ho’s Mickey 17, and broke out in Lady Macbeth and I Care a Lot. In Clayface she plays Caitlyn Corr, the scientist behind the experimental treatment that sets Hagen’s transformation in motion. If you’ve seen Ackie work, you know she doesn’t do “thankless supporting role.” Expect Corr to be complicated.

Max Minghella rounds out the trio, playing a character named John. Minghella — yes, son of the late, great Anthony Minghella — has carved out his own lane entirely, from The Social Network to years on The Handmaid’s Tale as Nick, plus a well-received turn behind the camera directing Teen Spirit. He’s one of those actors who quietly makes everything he’s in better.

The wider ensemble fills out with David Dencik, Eddie Marsan, Nancy Carroll, and Joshua James. Marsan in a DC horror movie is inspired casting all by itself — the man has “menacing character actor” down to a science.

A villain 85 years in the making

Clayface isn’t a new invention, not by a long shot. The character has been part of Batman’s rogues’ gallery since 1940, and — unusually for comics — the name has been worn by several different people. Basil Karlo, the original, was a washed-up Gotham actor whose obsession with fame curdled into something monstrous; he could shapeshift and impersonate anyone. Matt Hagen, the version Harries plays, was traditionally a treasure hunter transformed by exposure to a mysterious protoplasmic substance. Both versions have tormented Batman for decades, and both are, at their core, stories about people who lose themselves — literally.

That identity theme is clearly what drew this particular creative team. A shape-shifter who can’t hold his own form is a walking metaphor for fame, vanity, and self-destruction. In the hands of Flanagan and Watkins, it could be something genuinely unsettling rather than just another CGI slugfest.

What happens next

Clayface opens in North America on October 23, with international markets — including the UK, where Monday’s screening took place — getting it from October 21. It’s a theatrical exclusive, distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures, and given the horror angle and the IMAX push, the studio clearly believes this one plays best with a crowd.

The London screening felt like a victory lap before the starting gun. The cast looked relaxed, the Leake Street photocall looked like a blast, and the LA premiere last week got the machine rolling. Now it’s over to audiences. If DC’s gamble pays off — an R-rated horror movie headlined by a villain most casual moviegoers have never heard of — it could open the door to a whole weirder, braver corner of the DC universe. And frankly? That corner sounds like a lot more fun than another origin story.

See it on the biggest screen you can find. Your skin will crawl in the best possible way.

Source: Just Jared