On Friday, the third film in James Gunn's fledgling DC Universe was released in cinemas, with comic book villain Clayface following the rather more famous Superman and Supergirl in taking centre stage.
The film is helmed by British director James Watkins – whose previous big screen efforts include The Woman in Black and Speak No Evil – but this hadn't always been the plan.
Initially, the project was pitched by prolific horror writer/director Mike Flanagan, who wrote the first draft of the script but then handed over directing duties due to his commitments with the Carrie TV show and an upcoming Exorcist movie.
Flanagan is still credited as a writer on the film alongside Drive screenwriter Hossein Amini, who previously worked with Watkins on the TV show McMafia.
So when Radio Times spoke exclusively to Watkins ahead of Clayface's release, we asked him how much of that original script made it into the final film – and what exactly the process had been after he came on board.
"I read a script that Mike had written," he explained. "Which was a brilliant script, and the reason for me wanting to do the project.
"Then I pitched where I would take it as a director to James Gunn and Matt Reeves and Peter Safran and everybody [at DC], and they liked the journey of it."
Watkins added that the finished film is "very much Mike's script" but there were "natural processes" involved in the film's evolution during preparation, shooting and post-production.
"You just evolve things," he explained. "Maybe you streamline scenes. [So if] there's five scenes in a lab, you think, well, that'd be better as three. And then how do you just lean into those things.
"So with Hossein Amini we just tried to distil the essence of what's in the script. It's just a natural process!"
View Green Video on the source websiteOf course, working in a massive franchise like this one is always going to come with a certain degree of fan expectation, and the pressures might even be higher when dealing with a character like Clayface who has never been front and centre of his own feature film before.
But Watkins said this wasn't necessarily something he thought about while making the film.
"It's funny, I don't really worry about those pressures," he said. "I just read a script, I see the story of the character and I just try and focus on that. All the noise is off. Really genuinely, I don't think about.
"So it's like... 'Okay, how do I tell this version Matt Hagen's story, how he evolves and devolves and becomes Clayface, and how to tell that to its to the best of my ability."
Based on the fan reaction so far, it seems like Watkins's approach might have paid off. In the US, the film achieved an impressive A- rating on CinemaScore, which polls cinemagoers on their way out of the film.
As for critical reception, the verdict has been a little more mixed, with the view currently sitting at 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and 59 on Metacritic at time of writing.
Our own review awarded the film 3 stars, describing it as "pacey, gross, but unremarkable."
Clayface is now showing in UK cinemas.
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