Clayface leads global box office with $43 million opening weekend

MUMBAI: It seems the DC Universe has found a monster hit, and this time, the monster is the star. Clayface has made a promising debut at the global box office, collecting an estimated $43 million in its opening weekend and giving DC Studios a welcome lift with a film that trades superhero spectacle for body horror.

The film, starring Tom Rhys Harries as the Batman villain Matt Hagen, earned $24 million domestically and $19 million internationally. The opening total landed towards the higher end of early projections, putting the low-budget DCU title within touching distance of its reported $44 million production budget, according to Variety.

Directed by James Watkins and written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, Clayface follows Hagen as he attempts to rebuild his life after a brutal attack leaves his face scarred. The story charts the birth of the titular character, taking audiences into a grim corner of Gotham City through graphic body horror and a decidedly adult tone.

That makes its opening particularly significant for James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Universe, which is attempting to bring together films with very different moods and audiences. Some fans had questioned how a hard-R horror film such as Clayface would sit alongside the brighter, more colourful approach of 2025’s Superman. For now, the box office suggests that there is room for both capes and creeping unease in the same universe.

The early performance also offers a contrast with Supergirl, led by Milly Alcock, which struggled to justify its hefty price tag earlier this year. Released in June, the superhero film was labelled a box-office bomb after earning $126.46 million worldwide against a reported budget of almost $200 million, according to Box Office Mojo. Clayface, by comparison, has started its theatrical run with a global haul roughly matching its reported production cost.

That does not yet make the film a guaranteed success. The opening weekend is only the first act, and its eventual performance will depend on how well it holds audiences in the weeks ahead. However, the calendar could prove helpful: with Halloween approaching, horror fans have a timely reason to head to cinemas for a film that puts a familiar comic-book world through a far more unsettling lens.

The critical and audience response has also been encouraging. Clayface has a 75 per cent critics’ score and a 94 per cent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, while audience polling service CinemaScore awarded it an A-minus. Such a grade is an unusual achievement for a horror film, giving the title a potentially useful word-of-mouth advantage as it enters the next phase of its run.

Gunn, the co-chairman of DC Studios, celebrated the CinemaScore result in a post on Threads, saying he was proud of the film and its team. He noted that Sinners was the only horror film ever to receive an A from CinemaScore, while Obsession, Weapons and Clayface had earned A-minus grades in the preceding couple of years. He credited Watkins, Flanagan, Amini, Harries, Naomi and the wider team for the result.

But Clayface was not the only film making a mark over the weekend. At the domestic box office, You Can See Everything, the Elizabeth Holmes documentary from Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim, claimed second place with $19.5 million in its second weekend. The three-hour film had enjoyed a limited opening the previous weekend before expanding into an additional 1,800 theatres.

Its weekend earnings represented a 25 per cent increase on its debut, suggesting that wider availability and positive word-of-mouth helped bring more viewers into the story of Holmes and Theranos. The film’s performance indicates that audiences are willing to spend time with a lengthy documentary when curiosity and conversation give it momentum.

Laika’s latest stop-motion fantasy, Wildwood, meanwhile, landed in third place domestically with $11.77 million. The film, directed by Travis Knight, opened above projections, but its debut remains a concern against its reported $100 million budget.

The result is above the opening performance of Laika’s 2019 film Missing Link, but sits towards the lower end of the studio’s historical debuts. That is despite a strong critical reception: Wildwood has a 100 per cent critics’ score and a 97 per cent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. IGN also awarded the film 8 out of 10, praising its ambitious fantasy storytelling and handmade animation.

The contrast underlines a familiar box-office dilemma: glowing reviews can help a film find its audience, but they do not automatically translate into the ticket sales needed to recover a large production budget. Wildwood will need to sustain interest well beyond its opening weekend if it is to close the gap.

Elsewhere, Street Fighter added another $16.8 million worldwide in its second weekend, while Wicker, starring Alexander Skarsgård and Olivia Colman, recorded a domestic total of $5.75 million in its more limited first weekend.

For DC Studios, however, the immediate headline belongs to Clayface. Its $43 million global opening has put the character firmly in the conversation and offered a promising early result for a film made on a comparatively modest budget. Whether the monster can maintain its grip on the box office remains to be seen, but its first weekend suggests that audiences are willing to explore a darker side of the DC Universe.