Clayface might take place in Gotham City, but the DC location's famous protector, Batman, is nowhere to be seen.
That's because Clayface is the standalone tale of Matt Hagen, an up-and-coming Hollywood actor who is horrifically disfigured by a mobster after a drunken bad decision on a night out.
But, was director James Watkins ever tempted to include an obvious reference to the Dark Knight?
"I wasn't," he tells GamesRadar+ when we meet with him in London to discuss the film. "Because I sort of felt, like the Joker is the story of one person in Gotham, so is this," he adds, referencing Todd Phillips's 2019 film starring Joaquin Phoenix as the Clown Prince of Crime. "It's a city of a very many million people, and this is Matt Hagen's story. I didn't want to get too cute. I just wanted to be honest to the story."
Still, while Batman might not show up, the movie does establish Gotham City in the DCU for the first time, and it's a fittingly gritty, seedy, and lively version of the iconic setting.
"I wanted Gotham to be a character," explains Watkins. "It's this overbearing city. I've got a brilliant production designer, James Price, he did Poor Things, he won an Oscar for that. We've worked with him a few times. James and I talked a lot about German expressionist cinema from the '30s with buildings looming over people. And with Rob Hardy the DP, we looked at cinematography and photography from New York from the 70s and 80s and 90s, where it was really a rough city, and textures, and dirt, and had neons, and this kind of dirty poetry that the city had back then.
"So, trying to capture some of that, that sort of city where the rubbish doesn't get picked up, where it's corrupt, where you can't get a break, and then contrasting that with Coast City, where Matt is initially, which is sunny, and golden, and blue sky, and sea, and there's vegetation, greenery, which there isn't in Gotham," he adds. "You barely can see the sky in Gotham. It's always oppressive. We frame out the sky most of the time. The buildings frame it out. So, it was very much trying to land it as a character."
Of course, this is far from the first time that Gotham has been depicted on screen. "As well as looking at a lot of non-film reference, I looked at all the films," explains Watkins. "Joel Schumacher's world is very dayglow, whereas Chris Nolan's world is very grounded. Tim Burton's world with brilliant production design. Trying to track those different worlds is kind of fun, but they're all versions of Gotham."
The attention to detail translated into the fictional city feeling incredibly real for the actors themselves. "I kept having moments on set where I was just like, 'Whoa,'" says Matt Hagen actor Tom Rhys Harries. "You sort of normalize it, and then you remember that this is a very surreal thing to be experiencing. I thought James Price, the designer, did an incredible job of filling that world in and giving it an extended world beyond what we see on the camera. I'd pick up an empty soda can that had a very specific, niche Gotham branding on this soda can, and then underneath it would be a sticker that was crumpled up, and you'd open it up, and it would be like, I don't know, a ticket to a gig that was happening in Gotham that night. I'd had a number of pinch me moments throughout this whole process."
That also led to Max Minghella, who plays GCPD cop John Borrelli in the film, having a surreal moment of his own on set. "I went to see James Gunn's Superman in the cinema. I really loved it, and I knew nothing that I was going to be involved in this movie," he says. "And then, quite quickly after I saw that film in the cinema, I was on set holding a Jitter's Coffee cup, which is featured in Superman. And I do think it was one of the most surreal moments of my life, because I was like, 'I just went to see this film, and there was this prop in the movie, and now I'm holding that prop,' but it felt like it was yesterday. And I thought, 'Wow, the magic of movies.' I never get over it. It's just a kid in a candy shop, it's so fun."
The GCPD is also an iconic Gotham institution, which makes joining the universe particularly exciting. "Look, I can't pretend I was cool about it. I was completely overexcited and couldn't believe it," says Minghella. "I was pinching myself every day. It's just a real childhood dream come true. And then on top of that, Naomi [Ackie] and I both, even before we were part of this film, recognized it might be quite special, that there is something really original about it, but also that the Clayface character will lend itself in a very cinematic way. So, it wasn't just like we get to establish Gotham, and I get to be a cop, and all that stuff. It was also that we were making a movie we all really believed in. We all felt like we were doing something that was going to be different, so the whole thing was amazing."
"You see Gotham in the day," adds Ackie, who plays Caitlyn Corr, the doctor who treats Matt's injuries (and inadvertently gives him his shapeshifting powers). "You rarely see Gotham in the day. There are some scenes where there's neighbourhoods, people are having fun, normal things: different shades of Gotham that allow for you to believe that people live in Gotham and make it by."
But, don't expect to spot every Gotham City detail – even Watkins doesn't know all of them. "There are quite a few Easter eggs in the movie, and actually there are some I don't even know about because the graphics department, the production design department, they were always sneaking in little things all over the place," he says.
Clayface arrives in theaters this October 23. In the meantime, check out our guide to all the upcoming DC movies and TV shows for everything else the DCU has in store.
