Under the joint leadership of James Gunn and Peter Safran, the DC Universe has evolved into an increasingly unique, modern, interconnected blockbuster franchise. What began with TV projects like Creature Commandos and Peacemaker (both of which rule) made the leap to the big screen with the incredibly well-received and James Gunn-directed Superman in 2025.
Following that film up with an exceedingly lackluster Supergirl movie a year later was a strange choice, but to the team’s credit, Lanterns is currently airing weekly on HBO to massive ratings and tremendously positive reviews. Now, the DCU is gearing up for its next installment, in the form of Clayface, and it now seems apparent that the body horror film will not be pulling any punches, as it has officially been given an R-rating.
This is fascinating in a number of ways. For one, this makes it technically the first R-rated DCU movie, since both Superman and Supergirl were PG-13. James Gunn’s DCU precursor, The Suicide Squad, was also rated R, and much of the made-for-TV material of the DCU proper has followed that film’s sensibilities much more closely. Peacemaker is literally a continuation of The Suicide Squad, with Cena reprising his role from that film, and Creature Commandos similarly featured returning characters from that film and a smattering of the same kind of irreverent gore and hyper-violence. Lanterns has also been geared toward a more mature audience, with occasional bursts of violence, sex, and lots of ‘motherf-ckers.’
But conversely, up until now, the films have been largely sanitized for mass consumption. That’s not a knock against the films (a Superman movie doesn’t need to have David Corenswet dropping ‘f-cks’ out of the sky) but rather an observation that Clayface is breaking from this norm and that the DCU’s leadership seem relatively eager for it to do so. The film has been marketed squarely as a horror film (despite ostensibly being a Batman spinoff), which has turned out to be a really great idea in 2026, where ambitious horror films have continued to thrive at the box office.
The reasons for Clayface’s rating include strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity, and brief drug use. All of this would seem to indicate that Clayface isn’t just talking the talk, ala some of Sony’s attempts at making movies centered on superhero opponents like Venom or Morbius; it is ready to genuinely walk the walk. From the sounds of it, Clayface is going to be a bona fide horror movie, and that’s pretty exciting.
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