Hossein Amini To Do Rewrites On DC Studios’s 'Clayface'

Are you tweaking? I’m not tweaking, but they are

Mister Actor, you could have clayed her, or something. Academy Award-nominated screenwriter Hossein Amini has been brought in for the next draft of DC Studios’s Clayface, after horror maestro Mike Flanagan wrote the original. There are reportedly five months before production commences in October in the United Kingdom.

Academy Award-nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay for 1997’s The Wings of the Dove, Amini’s other writing credits include Drive, Snow White and the Huntsman, 47 Ronin, and The Snowman. His dabbling into television includes three episodes of The Alienist and four of Disney+’s Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries.

Mike Flanagan Writing 'Clayface' Movie At DC Studios

Clayface was created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, and introduced in Detective Comics #40 from June 1940, making him one of Batman’s earliest foes. This initial version, Basil Karlo, was a washed-up actor who begins committing crimes wearing the claylike mask of one of his former characters. The villain’s well-known shapeshifting abilities were first introduced in 1961. An incarnation who might be equally known is Matt Hagen, thanks to his DCAU iteration incorporating elements of Karlo. Debuting in Detective Comics #298 as a treasure hunter who gains shapeshifting abilities from a radioactive pool of protoplasm, his Batman: The Animated Series iteration voiced by Ron Perlman is an actor who was previously disfigured in an accident. He acquires a beauty cream from a corrupt businessman that restores his face and enables him to change it to that of another person. However he quickly finds himself dependent due to its temporary nature. Further Hagen iterations appear in Young Justice and Teen Titans Go! Further Karlo iterations include Fox’s Gotham, where Brian McManamon played a Karlo revived by Hugo Strange and Ethel Peabody using octopus DNA that ultimately enabled the transformations. Television has introduced original iterations as well, including Ethan Bennett from The Batman who was Ellen Yin’s original police partner mutated by Joker Putty (he gets better, even helping to handle Karlo), and Pennyworth’s enhanced being who poses as high-ranking CIA official Virginia Devereaux. Portrayed by Lorraine Burroughs, she travels with Patrick Wayne to England. Recent new Karlos include Suicide Squad Isekai voiced by Brandon Hearnsberger and Jun Fukuyama, and Batman: Caped Crusader, voiced by Dan Donohue. In his one appearance thus far his typecasting as villains leads him to use an experimental face-altering serum. After being rejected by an actress he accepts his disfigurement and murders the serum’s creator and his co-stars.

Alan Tudyk, voice of separate iterations of the character on Harley Quinn and the DC Universe-set animated series Creature Commandos, is voicing one of the Kryptonian robots stationed at the Fortress of Solitude in Superman, which kicks off the film slate of the new DC Universe on July 11. Appearing in 2 episodes of the latter so far, the role is poised to expand in the new season, so it’s possible that the rewrites are incorporating this specific iteration’s unique touches of history and personality. Flanagan’s Carrie series for Prime Video has been picking up in casting news, so maybe his plate is too full to come back for these rewrites.

Clayface is currently set to be directed by Speak No Evil director James Watkins and released in theaters on September 11, 2026. DC Studios co-CEOs James Gunn and Peter Safran, The Batman director Matt Reeves and Lynn Harris are all producers.

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Source: The Wrap