Mike Flanagan has pitched Projects Revolving Around the Villainous Clayface to James Gunn & Peter Safran; Could Debut in 'The Batman: Part II'

by Darian Scalamoni

    When news was announced that James Gunn and Peter Safran were taking over DC Studios, everyone went wild. Whether it was on social media or in Hollywood itself, it's clear that with a creative at the helm such as Gunn, he intends to be more filmmaker friendly moving forward with comic book properties. A number of directors have come out of the woodwork to say they want to tackle certain projects. One of them already secured a job back in February, when we reported that James Mangold would be tackling Swamp Thing.

    Now, according to multiple sources, there are reports that Mike Flanagan (The Haunting of Hill House, Doctor Sleep) has pitched Gunn and Safran on the idea of introducing the Batman villain known as Clayface to live-action audiences for the DCU. It's not officially known yet whether Clayface would be part of the integral Chapter One: Gods and Monsters slate that Gunn introduced back in January, but some are speculating that Clayface may actually be a new character in the upcoming film, The Batman: Part II, which is separate from the canonized timeline being set up by Gunn and Safran.

    The Batman: Part II is the follow-up to last year's epic film The Batman which was directed by Matt Reeves setting up his own BatVerse. Having already introduced characters such as Catwoman, The Riddler, The Falcone crime family and The Penguin (who is getting his own spinoff show on HBO Max), it would make sense for a darker character such as Clayface to enter the fold. However, Deadline is reporting that Flanagan has pitched a separate feature film version for the character, and though there's no greenlight yet, the studio hasn't flat out told him, "No." 

    The original version of the character was introduced back in 1940 as a moderately successful actor who began a method acting approach to a character that he portrayed in a horror film before turning to crime. Clayface is a shape shifting adversary of Batman, who unsurprisingly is made out of clay, and has already been featured across a number of films, television series, animation, video games and other forms of media. The character was portrayed on both The CW's Gotham and Epix/HBO Max series Pennyworth. 

    The horror director has talked many times in the past about creating a film revolving around Clayface, saying once in a tweet from 2021 that he'd approach it as "standalone...horror/thriller/tragedy." Even more recently, Flanagan stated in an installment of the Script Apart podcast that he expressed interest in a horror-leaning take on the villain, while also pitching versions of film and television revolving around Justice League Dark, Scarecrow and Constantine. He later revealed that the meeting "kind of went nowhere," but interestingly enough, multiple Marvel directors have said in past interviews that they had pitched projects to Kevin Feige in the past and thought the same thing, only to later be called by the head of Marvel himself to take on an MCU installment. 

    Flanagan is best known for his three massive Netflix horror series The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor and Midnight Mass. He also directed the follow-up of The Shining, Doctor Sleep which starred Ewan McGregor and Rebecca Ferguson. He left his Netflix deal last year to sign over with Amazon and is currently developing yet another series adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower.