Clayface Avoids DCU Box Office Curse Over Halloween Weekend

Published Oct 31, 2026, 11:57 AM EDT

Brennan Klein (he/him) is a senior news writer at Screen Rant, host of the Attack of the Queerwolf podcast, and contributor at Alternate Ending and Horror Press. He has been writing and podcasting about pop culture (especially horror movies) for over a decade at platforms including Blumhouse, Fangoria, Dread Central, The Backlot, and Arrow in the Head.

Clayface is soaring higher than Supergirl during its sophomore weekend.

2026's Clayface is the third installment in the newly rebranded DC Universe, which kicked off with the 2025 James Gunn movie Superman. The body horror movie stars Tom Rhys Harries as Matt Hagen, a rising star whose trajectory is derailed when an experimental procedure turns his flesh into clay. The movie debuted on October 23 and earned a 3-day domestic opening weekend gross of $24 million, which was the lowest of the three-film franchise, falling below the 2026 flop Supergirl, which earned just $126.4 million against its reported budget of $170 million or more.

Per Variety, as of Saturday morning, Clayface is projected to earn a 3-day total of $10.25 million by the end of its second weekend at the domestic box office. This sees it dropping 57.3% from its debut weekend. While this is a more severe drop than Superman (-53.2%), it has avoided the fate of the DCU's previous non-Superman movie, which had a significantly worse drop of 76.8%.

Additionally, even though Supergirl had a better debut, it only earned $8.6 million during its sophomore weekend, so Clayface is doing better in the raw numbers during its second frame. Below, see a breakdown of the week 2 performance of all three DCU movies (presuming Clayface's numbers hold):

Title	Domestic Debut	Week 2 Drop	Domestic Week 2
Superman (2025)	$125 million	-53.2%	$58.4 million
Supergirl (2026)	$37.1 million	-76.8%	$8.6 million
Clayface (2026)	$24 million	-57.3%	$10.25 million (estimated)

While Clayface's overall numbers still can't compete with Superman, it was never expected to. The movie is rated R, which inherently limits its audience in a way that the previous installments' PG-13 ratings didn't. In keeping with this, it had a significantly smaller budget than the other two movies, with a reported $44 million price tag that is roughly a quarter of what Supergirl cost and less than a fifth of Superman's reported $225 million budget.

While it still most likely needs to earn back two and a half times its budget in order to end up in the black, that places Clayface's estimated break-even point at a reasonable $110 million. It had already earned $61.8 million worldwide by the end of its first full week in theaters, and while it is dropping, it has a solid chance of hitting that benchmark by the end of its run. Additionally, while its sophomore drop was higher than Superman's, it's not especially high for a 2026 horror movie.

The horror genre tends to be frontloaded, earning week 2 drops of 60% or more, but 2026 horror movies have had especially harsh drops, with titles like Ice Cream Man (-88.4%), We Bury the Dead (-85.7%), Faces of Death (-82%), Psycho Killer (-80.6%), Scream 7 (-73.3%), 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple (-72.6%), Other Mommy (-70.5%), Return to Silent Hill (-69.8%), Passenger (-68.8%), Backrooms (-67.7%), and Undertone (-66.8%) all landing on the chart of the 400 worst week 2 drops of all time. A whopping four titles landed in the Top 50.

Clayface becoming a modest success does not necessarily mean that the franchise is on solid footing, as it remains to be seen if other upcoming non-Superman movies (such as James Mangold's Swamp Thing) perform well. However, the horror movie's box office performance, combined with the critical and commercial success of HBO's DCU series Lanterns, sees the DCU recovering significantly from the disappointing returns of Supergirl.

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  Tom Rhys Harries

  Matt Hagen / Clayface

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  Naomi Ackie

  Dr. Caitlin Bates