Clayface might take place in Gotham City, but the DC location's famous protector, Batman, is nowhere to be seen.

That's because Clayface is the standalone tale of Matt Hagen, an up-and-coming Hollywood actor who is horrifically disfigured by a mobster after a drunken bad decision on a night out.

But, was director James Watkins ever tempted to include an obvious reference to the Dark Knight?

"I wasn't," he tells GamesRadar+ when we meet with him in London to discuss the film. "Because I sort of felt, like the Joker is the story of one person in Gotham, so is this," he adds, referencing Todd Phillips's 2019 film starring Joaquin Phoenix as the Clown Prince of Crime. "It's a city of a very many million people, and this is Matt Hagen's story. I didn't want to get too cute. I just wanted to be honest to the story."

Still, while Batman might not show up, the movie does establish Gotham City in the DCU for the first time, and it's a fittingly gritty, seedy, and lively version of the iconic setting.

"I wanted Gotham to be a character," explains Watkins. "It's this overbearing city. I've got a brilliant production designer, James Price, he did Poor Things, he won an Oscar for that. We've worked with him a few times. James and I talked a lot about German expressionist cinema from the '30s with buildings looming over people. And with Rob Hardy the DP, we looked at cinematography and photography from New York from the 70s and 80s and 90s, where it was really a rough city, and textures, and dirt, and had neons, and this kind of dirty poetry that the city had back then.

Source link