The DCU's Batman Setup Officially Continues In Next Week's R-Rated Supervillain Movie

Published Oct 16, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT

Once head of Screen Rant's Star Wars coverage and co-lead of Superheroes, Tom Bacon now works with the movies and books teams. He's a lifelong fan of the fantasy and sci-fi genres, and loves franchises such as Doctor Who and Marvel. You can find him on Twitter @TomABacon, on LinkedIn @tabacon, or on Muckrack under tombacon.

Tom has a wide range of interests, and he continues to serve his university as a volunteer chaplain. He's heavily involved with his local church, and anyone who checks him out on Twitter will swiftly learn he's into British politics too.

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The DCU is continuing its Batman setup next week. James Gunn is taking his time introducing Batman into the DCU, wary of overlapping with Matt Reeves' Batman movies. "We're well into Batman 2," he pointed out when discussing The Brave and the Bold in January, "and I wouldn't want to cloud the Batsphere until after that."

Still, it's hard to deny the sheer amount of setup we've had for Batman already. There's a blurred line between DCU canon and Gunn's Suicide Squad, meaning quite a few Batman characters have already made their DCU debut (which likely includes Margot Robbie's Harley Quinn). Lanterns featured a police chief who'd fled Gotham City in fear of her life, confirming the city is a place of corruption and crime gangs. But, next week, the DCU's Batman setup continues as we finally head to Gotham City itself.

It's Time To See The Shadow Of The Bat

James Watkins' Clayface is an entire R-rated horror movie starring a Batman villain, an actor who's transformed into a shapeshifter named Clayface. The film will portray Clayface more as an antihero than an outright bad guy (an approach sometimes used in the comics too, where he briefly became a member of the Bat-Family in an extremely emotional arc). But here's the exciting thing; this is explicitly set in Gotham City itself.

Watkins has insisted Batman's presence will be felt in Clayface. Speaking to SFX Magazine (via GamesRadar), he stressed that Gotham was literally designed with Batman in mind.

"We want the world [of Gotham] to be corrupt. We want it to be a city where litter doesn't get picked up, where there's a sense of decay, where there's dirt, where the canyons of these places are overbearing. You're in a city called Gotham. So I guess you feel the shadow of the Bat inherently. Because of the nature of where you are."

DC Has Shown Us The Shadow Of The Bat

Batman has yet to be cast for the DCU, and it's safe to assume we're still years away from the Dark Knight's DCU debut (not least because Reeves' Batman 2 has now been paused due to a family tragedy). But I love the way Watkins puts it; the DCU is showing us the shadow of the Bat before Gunn introduces Batman himself. We've already met several Bat-villains, and now we're getting a sense of what Gotham City itself is like.

Tim Burton established Gotham City as a character in its own right when he reinterpreted Gotham for the 1989 movie. This won't be Burton's Gotham, but it will set the tone all the same; as Watkins explains, it will be based on 1980s and 1990s street photography of New York. He explained Clayface would feature "the bawdy glamor of New York, slightly edgy, slightly eccentric, slightly menacing, richly saturated colors." That, then, is the world the DCU's Batman inhabits, and it's only a matter of time before Bruce Wayne will be cast so he can step out of the shadows.

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  Tom Rhys Harries

  Matt Hagen / Clayface

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  Naomi Ackie

  Dr. Caitlin Bates

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  David Dencik

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  Max Minghella