Gunn argues filmmaker enthusiasm matters as much as public demand when choosing which DC characters to develop into films.
James Gunn’s Threads response to a single objection about Clayface reads like a quiet manifesto. Someone online asked who asked for a Clayface film. Gunn responded by pointing out that filmmakers are not obliged to base entire projects on public polling, citing Back to the Future, Casablanca, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Matrix as examples of films nobody specifically requested before they existed.
The comment was subsequently deleted, but the exchange matters because it reveals something deliberate about how DC under Gunn’s creative oversight operates. This is not a studio desperately mining nostalgia or chasing Marvel’s formula. It is a head of studio willing to green-light a niche character because someone, in this case, Mike Flanagan, followed by director James Watkins and writer Hossein Amini, brought a story worth telling.
That story, based on the premise Variety reports, involves Matt Hagen, a disfigured actor whose reconstructive treatment restores his appearance but fractures his sense of reality. There is something distinctly unnerving about that setup, a premise that could reasonably lead toward psychological horror rather than conventional superhero action. The choice of character and premise together suggests that Gunn’s DC is not simply rebranding familiar IP with different actors and writers. It is selecting characters precisely because they enable specific stories.
The Difference Between Having IP and Having a Reason to Use It
This is the crux of Gunn’s argument, and it is harder to dismiss than it initially appears. The modern film industry has become obsessed with recognisable intellectual property, but recognition alone is not a creative brief. Many major studios have discovered that owning a character does not automatically translate to knowing what to do with that character. The difference between adapting existing IP and selecting projects by perceived popular demand is substantial.
A character-based film still requires filmmaker enthusiasm. Clayface is DC property, that part is true. But the question is not whether DC should make films based on its existing catalogue. The question is whether a story needs to justify its own existence beyond the brand name attached to it. Under Gunn’s direction, apparently it does.
Tom Rhys Harries is cast as Hagen, with James Watkins directing. The film is scheduled for a UK theatrical release on 23 October 2026. What emerges from the available details is not a cynical revival of an obscure character, but a specific film—one about transformation, identity and damage, that happens to be built on DC property. That distinction matters.
What Gunn’s Logic Actually Reveals
This is not a position that translates to a blanket rejection of audience appetite or fan involvement. Gunn himself works within DC’s existing universe and character catalogue. The point is more subtle: filmmaker interest and narrative possibility should factor into which stories get made, not just audience demand or franchise utility.
That philosophy exposes a real strategic difference between DC’s current direction and much of what has come before. Clayface is not the obvious choice. Superman was. Wonder Woman was. A Batman film will always find an audience. Clayface requires belief in the filmmakers and the story they want to tell with the character.
Whether that belief is justified, whether Clayface will deliver the specific kind of film Watkins and Amini have conceived, remains to be seen in October. But the defence itself is worth attending to. It suggests that someone running a major studio’s creative output has decided that not every film needs to be validated in advance by popular referendum.
