‘Clayface’ Crawls Out of the Box Office Mud With a Surprising DCU Win

James Gunn’s DC Universe entered the fall with a bruise it was still nursing. ‘Supergirl’ flailed this summer, earning $126.4 million worldwide against a reported budget of $170 million or more. That stumble left plenty of fans wondering whether the franchise’s early momentum had evaporated.

Enter a very different kind of DC movie. ‘Clayface’ is an R-rated body horror film in which Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a rising actor whose ruined face leads him to a scientist, played by Naomi Ackie, whose treatment slowly turns his body into living clay. It arrived at a moment when horror was already printing money, as films like ‘Obsession,’ ‘Backrooms,’ and ‘Resident Evil’ have all become huge hits at the box office in 2026.

Now the numbers are in, and the Batman villain’s solo debut has landed on top. ‘Clayface’ took the No. 1 spot with $24 million from 3,458 North American theaters, and added another $19 million overseas from 76 markets for a global tally of $43 million. ComicBook.com highlighted the result on X, noting the film nearly matched its budget in a single weekend.

That budget is the real story. The film cost just $44 million to produce, which leaves it well-positioned theatrically. It is a small price tag for a studio that just watched a much bigger bet fall short.

The opening wasn’t a runaway, though. ‘Clayface’ landed on the lower end of the studio’s expectations of $25 million to $35 million. Boxoffice Pro’s long-range forecast had pegged the film at $23 million to $33 million, so the result sits right inside that window.

It also had to fend off an unlikely rival. A24’s Elizabeth Holmes documentary ‘You Can See Everything’ collected $19.5 million in its second weekend while expanding to 2,655 venues, bringing its domestic total to $45.1 million. A documentary pushing a DC film that hard is not something many analysts saw coming.

Audiences, at least, seem to be on board. ‘Clayface’ holds a reported 94% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes and an A- CinemaScore, which suggests positive word of mouth could help it keep momentum beyond opening weekend. ComicBook.com went further, noting that the film has one of the highest CinemaScores for any horror movie.

Comparisons to ‘Supergirl’ are inevitable, and they cut both ways. The $24 million domestic debut falls below the $37.1 million opening reported for ‘Supergirl.’ Still, while this is the lowest global debut for any installment in the franchise so far, ‘Clayface’ also has the lowest budget by far, and it is the closest any DCU movie has come to earning back its budget during its global debut.

There is a corporate angle too. The win marks the second No. 1 movie for Paramount-Warner Bros. since the merger, following ‘Street Fighter’ the previous weekend. For a combined studio eager to prove its slate has range, that back-to-back streak is a handy talking point.

Behind the camera, the film has serious genre credentials. ‘Clayface’ was directed by James Watkins from a screenplay by Hossein Amini and Mike Flanagan. That pedigree helps explain why a hard-R villain origin story drew a crowd without a single cape in sight.

The DCU isn’t coasting yet, but the mood has shifted. Even after the ‘Supergirl’ disappointment, ‘Lanterns’ was a substantial hit on HBO and HBO Max, and now ‘Clayface’ has opened to No. 1. The next big test comes soon, since ‘Clayface’ is the last DC movie until ‘Man of Tomorrow’ arrives next July.