When it came to casting the lead in DC Studios’ next big movie Clayface, the studio went with a fresh face, that being Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries.
The actor from the Uma Thurman-starring Apple TV series Suspicion and such movies as Uberto Pasolini’s The Return (starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche), the Gerard Butler action title Kandahar and Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen, landed the role from a competitive list of British thespians that included 28 Years Later‘s Jack O’Connell, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes‘ Tom Blyth and 1917‘s George MacKay.
The movie, from Speak No Evil director James Watkins, is the next big project for James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DC Studios after next summer’s Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, scheduled for release on September 11, 2026. Clayface will be shooting at Warner Bros Leavesden studio in the UK.
Clayface is shape-shifting villain in the Batman comics and got his introduction as part of Detective Comics #40 in June 1940. The original Clayface was a moderately successful actor who adopted the identity of a character he’d portrayed in a horror pic after turning to crime. Clayface has a body seemingly made out of clay and has appeared over the years in various films, series, animated works, video games and other forms of media.
Rhys Harries, repped by UTA, Curtis Brown Group and Goodman, Genow, Schenkman, Smelkinson & Christopher, was born in Cardiff, Wales and attended the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. In theatre, he made his West End stage debut in 2013 in Jez Butterworth’s Mojo opposite Colin Morgan, Rupert Grint and Ben Whishaw. The actor also starred in Netflix’s Álex Pina-created series White Lines.
Producing Clayface are Gunn and Safran as well as The Batman filmmaker Matt Reeves and Lynn Harris. Chantal Nong is executive producer. The Life of Chuck filmmaker Mike Flanagan wrote the first draft of Clayface, with additional drafts by Oscar-nominated The Wings of a Dove and Drive scribe Hossein Amini.
DC Studios is expected to make a big splash with Gunn’s Season 2 of Peacemaker at San Diego Comic-Con. DC’s Superman from Gunn is opening July 11. The movie is currently projected to open to $100M+ at the domestic box office.
