Warner Bros. tosses Clayface and a CGI puppet Robin movie onto its schedule
Earlier this week, we noted that Mike Flanagan's long-rumored take on goop-miened Batman villain Clayface had finally been bumped up to official status—albeit, with the horror mastermind only on deck to write the movie, not direct it. (Nobody's attached yet for that job.) Now, Warner Bros. and DC Studios have made things official-official, slating the film for a September 11, 2026 release date.
As noted by Deadline, that placement suggests a vote of confidence from DC Studios heads James Gunn and Peter Safran; the week after Labor Day tends to be a good one at the box office, including for horror, with It, The Nun, and more having cleaned up in that space in previous years. Which suggests that Flanagan, who was talking up his ideas for a tragic/horror Clayface movie as early as 2021 on social media, must have had a heck of a pitch to sell the character—typically portrayed as a failed Hollywood star who turns to a life of crime after being exposed to mud man chemicals—to the studio bosses. (There are actually a bunch of Clayfaces with different origin stories schlorping around in the comics; their most consistent traits are an ability to shapeshift, a serious danger of falling apart, and a general tendency to give Batman an enemy he can't just punch into submission.)
At the same time that it splotched Clayface onto the schedule, DC Studios also pushed forward another Batman-adjacent project: Dynamic Duo, an animated film centered on two of the Batman's acrobatic sidekicks, Dick Grayson and Jason Todd. This one fascinates mostly because it sounds like it could wind up looking genuinely weird; the film is being animated by a studio called Swaybox, which The Batman's Matt Reeves was apparently a fan of. (Reeves produces on the film.) Per Deadline, their work combines CGI with live-action motion capture and stop-motion elements to create something that incorporates elements of puppetry into the animation process. (You can watch a demo reel of their stuff here, including some genuinely cool-looking puppet work.) "CGI Puppet Robins movie" isn't something we knew we were excited for before today, but we're now at least cautiously interested in the movie, which has been set for the far future of June 2028.