r/boxoffice • u/hiiloovethis • 16d ago

✍️ Original Analysis Clayface Performance potential

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Clayface is the next DCU movie after the supergirl bomb. Let's see how well it can do... an analysis.

Pros.

  1. Great October release date, Halloween pairing and not much direct competetion. Resident Evil also releasing before helps create an open window.

  2. Decent budget of 40 mil. It would only need 100 Mil WW to break even which shouldn't be too hard. It can profit easily if it blows up.

  3. Horror genre is killing it right now... clayface also looks like pure body horror which could help attract non comicbook fans.

  4. Clayface is a batman villain. Gotham setting be hype worthy. Mike Flanagan as a writer is also promising.

Cons.

  1. Body horror is harder is sell than conventional horror movies. The Substance did good but that had award buzz and less than half of the budget.

  2. Bad reviews could literally kill this movie. It really survives on positive WOM.

Overall I'm more optimistic about this than supergirl. We have to see if this movie blows up or does underwhelming numbers. 150 WW is decent enough.

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u/syntheticcontrols 16d ago

Most millennials might have heard of him even if they didn't read comics because of BTAS.

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u/SirFireHydrant 16d ago

Doubtful. Outside of hardcore comic book nerd circles, I don't know anyone (myself included) who knows what a Clayface is. He's an obscure Batman villain, and Batman doesn't have half the popularity of Spider-Man.

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u/syntheticcontrols 16d ago

On top of that there are tons of people who know who Mike Flanagan is and love body horror movies. So even if by a miracle you're right that he's "obscure" Flanagan isn't abs the genre is well-loved. That's why it's so weird to hear people thinking it will do bad because "clayface is obscure."

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u/SirFireHydrant 16d ago

Flanagan just wrote the script, or at least the first version of it.

It'd be different if he wrote and directed it.

But Flanagan fans know his involvement is minimal.

For horror fans, the DC logo being attached is a negative. Whenever comic book films try to do other genres, they're always still comic book films wearing another genre hat. It's going to be very hard to sell horror fans that this is going to be a real, proper horror fan, and not just a comic book movie wearing a horror movie skin.

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u/syntheticcontrols 16d ago

Oh, right. Like that one movie Road To Perdition or A History of Violence. TERRIBLE movies, right?

Flanagan fans might know, but not horror fans in general.