Naomi Ackie Enters the DC Universe in 'Clayface,' Warner Bros.' Horror Take on a Batman Villain

Naomi Ackie has played Whitney Houston, fought in a galaxy far, far away and kept audiences on edge in some of the past few years' smartest thrillers. Now she's stepping into Gotham City.

Clayface opens in theaters Oct. 23 from Warner Bros. and DC Studios. It isn't a superhero movie in the usual sense. It's a full-on body horror film, built around one of Batman's most tragic villains, and Ackie is its female lead.

The story

Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a rising actor and Gotham native whose career is destroyed when a local crime boss has his face carved up. Desperate to get his life back, Hagen turns to an experimental treatment that lets him reshape his face like clay. The cure turns out to be worse than the disease.

The treatment comes from Ackie's character, Dr. Caitlin Corr, a mysterious and duplicitous scientist working at the cutting edge of biological manipulation. She's an original character created for the film, not pulled from the comics. That gives Ackie a role no one else has defined before her.

The team behind it

The film was born from a pitch by horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan, who wanted to tell Clayface's story with the character portrayed as something other than a straightforward villain. Flanagan co-wrote the screenplay with Hossein Amini, the writer of Drive. James Watkins, who directed the Speak No Evil remake, is behind the camera. Matt Reeves and Lynn Harris produce.

Max Minghella plays Gotham detective John Borrelli, Dr. Corr's fiancé. Eddie Marsan, David Dencik and Aaron Paul round out the cast.

Naomi Ackie's moment

Ackie's run has been one of the most interesting in film. The London-born actor won a BAFTA TV Award for The End of the F***ing World. She took on Whitney Houston in I Wanna Dance with Somebody and has since stacked up genre credits in Blink Twice and Bong Joon Ho's Mickey 17.

This year she's been on a roll. She co-starred opposite Jason Statham in Shelter in January and won the Film Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Performance for Sorry, Baby.

Clayface is her biggest studio showcase yet. In a genre that hasn't always made room for Black women beyond the sidekick role, she's playing the character who sets the whole nightmare in motion.

What to expect

Early footage points to what may be the goriest DC film yet: melting prosthetics, transformation horror and plenty of unconventional violence. If you're squeamish, consider yourself warned. If you're a horror fan, this may be the Halloween-season release to circle.

Clayface opens in theaters nationwide Friday, Oct. 23.