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Is the Clayface Movie Connected to Creature Commandos?

Is Clayface connected to Creature Commandos? Yes: the film shows Matt Hagen’s origin before the animated series, though its exact DCU date remains unclear.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · November 5, 2026

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Matt Hagen picks up a newspaper that reports his own death. It was the newsstand that caught Marshall Harris’s eye. Seth Everett had noticed it too, yet neither man could pin down when Clayface takes place.

Yes, the Clayface movie is connected to Creature Commandos. It tells the origin of the same Matt Hagen who appears in the animated series, and its events happen earlier. DC Studios co-head Peter Safran has confirmed both points. The harder question is where Hagen’s story falls among the DCU’s other events, especially Batman’s.

Is Clayface connected to Creature Commandos?

Harris put the connection together during his visit to Everett’s Hall of Justice podcast, in episode 470, “DC Studios Clayface REVIEW (SPOILERS).” In Creature Commandos, Clayface has his powers already. Harris recalled him posing as a professor. The movie goes back to the actor before he can change his face at will.

Everett admitted he had missed that link while watching. Once Harris brought it up, he reconsidered the ending: if the man in the film is the one who later appears in Creature Commandos, the apparent end of Hagen’s story cannot be final. “I didn’t realize the Creature Commandos part,” Everett said.

Safran gave Entertainment Weekly the firm answer that the hosts were working toward. He confirmed that both appearances show the same Clayface and that the film comes first in the story’s order. That settles a question a viewer could reasonably have. One version is played in live action by Tom Rhys Harries; Alan Tudyk voices the animated Clayface.

You can watch the film without first meeting the Commandos. It begins with Hagen’s own trouble: a rising actor loses his face after an attack, then turns to an experimental treatment. The connection changes what you know about his future. It does not make the movie a missing episode of the show.

Why does the Clayface movie feel so different?

Everett’s problem was Batman. Once Hagen starts killing people in Gotham, Everett wanted someone with the means to stop him. “That’s Batman’s role,” he said of the doctor’s effort to reach Hagen. To Everett, a villain story set in Batman’s city leaves an obvious space when Batman never appears.

Harris saw a different film. He liked the stretch in which Hagen tries to get his face and career back. He also liked that the story lets him become dangerous. “Clayface is bad,” Harris said. He could feel sorry for the injured actor without excusing what that actor does next.

Their disagreement gets at the odd shape of this DCU connection. DC calls Clayface a horror thriller. Director James Watkins made a story of damaged skin and a treatment that changes Hagen in ways he cannot control. Mike Flanagan wrote the original story; he and Hossein Amini have screenplay credits. The film opened in North American theaters on October 23, 2026.

A linked universe can hold films that look nothing alike. This one asks viewers to sit close to Hagen as his face begins to fail him. Harris singled out a scene on an airplane, where Hagen takes sharp scissors to his own skin. Everett wondered why anyone would attempt that during a turbulent flight. Harris’s answer was plain: vanity. It had already cost Hagen plenty.

When does Clayface take place in the DCU?

The safe answer: before Creature Commandos. James Gunn has also placed it before Superman, and beyond those two points, the film leaves viewers room to guess.

Everett and Harris tried. There are cell phones, so they did not see a distant past. There is also that newspaper on a physical newsstand. Harris guessed the 2010s; Everett said the guess made sense. Neither claimed to have found a date hidden on the page. They were doing what anyone does when a film refuses to tell them the year: looking at the objects people use.

Watkins told TechRadar that he left the year “deliberately unspecific.” He described a modern world with an older, hands-on feel. That makes the newspaper a good piece of set dressing and a poor calendar. A paper in a newsstand can set a mood. It cannot prove that the events happen in 2014.

“So clearly this is a prequel because it comes before Creature Commandos”
— Marshall Harris, on Hall of Justice

The guesses have since narrowed a little, though they remain guesses. In November 2026, Gunn called a fan-made timeline “pretty good.” That chart put Clayface in 2021. He did not give the movie an official year in his reply. The hosts’ 2010s theory and the fan’s 2021 placement should both be read with that limit in mind.

Is Batman already in Gotham during Clayface?

This is where Harris’s theory needs a correction. During the episode, he wondered if Hagen’s origin might take place a few years before Batman exists. It would explain why Gotham’s best-known crime fighter never comes to the scene. Everett could see the appeal, though he still wanted Batman in the film.

Safran later told Collider that Batman is already operating in Gotham during Clayface. The studio, he said, had not worked out what Batman is doing during Hagen’s story. Batman is around. Yet the movie does not bring him into the fight, which leaves Everett’s complaint intact and rules out Harris’s idea that the whole story must happen before Batman.

Gotham matters here for more than its famous resident. DC describes a film that moves between Hagen’s bright life in Coast City and the city where he grew up. Watkins gave Gotham crowded streets and a worn look. Harris described its police and civic life as unable to keep crime in check. That reading helped him accept a story in which Hagen can do terrible things without a caped figure arriving on cue.

Everett was less willing to let it go. He pointed out that Coast City carries its own DC link through Hal Jordan. Gotham carries an even louder one. Name the city, he argued, and people will wait for Batman. Safran’s answer tells us Batman exists there. It does not tell us why he misses this case.

Is this Clayface part of Robert Pattinson’s Batman movies?

No. Clayface belongs to Gunn and Safran’s shared DCU, the one that includes Creature Commandos and Superman. Robert Pattinson’s Batman films have their own continuity. DC has said its DCU Batman is a different version of the character.

The mix-up has a good reason. Matt Reeves, who directs Pattinson’s Batman films, is a producer on Clayface. He told Entertainment Weekly that he wanted to work on an origin story for a Gotham character. His name in the credits does not move Hagen into Pattinson’s world.

Everett and Harris had to stop and sort this out aloud. Harris wondered if The Batman was separate from the rest of DC. Everett said it was. Their brief confusion sounds much like the audience’s: the same city can appear in two current film worlds, and the person helping make one movie can also work in the other.

There is a simpler way to keep them straight. Follow Hagen. The Clayface played by Harries grows into the Clayface of Creature Commandos. He has no stated link to Pattinson’s Batman or to Colin Farrell’s Penguin. Producer credits tell you who helped make a film. They do not tell you which Gotham its characters live in.

What does the Clayface ending mean for Creature Commandos?

Harris brought Everett back to the animated series. Everett had watched the film’s ending as a possible end for Hagen. Then it clicked: because Hagen appeared later, the story had to leave him a way forward. That changed things.

Harris had assumed Hagen would survive. Everett pushed back: a film can still give a villain a complete ending, even in a shared world. That is part of what bothered him. Harris cared more about the path there, from the injured actor to the man who can take another person’s shape.

They also disagreed about the film’s last moments. Harris asked whether the woman Hagen loved was alive, and whether he had made a version of her himself. Everett said she lived. Both reached for an older Clayface tale from Batman: The Animated Series, in which a piece of Clayface develops a life of its own.

DC says the film draws heavily from the cartoon’s two-part “Feat of Clay,” though it changes Hagen’s injury and treatment. The cartoon gives longtime viewers a useful echo; it is not an answer key for every image in the movie. For the larger timeline, one detail is enough. Later, Hagen can still pretend to be someone else. The man with the newspaper has a long way to go.

The full episode of Hall of Justice is on Underdog Podcasts, with the rest of the network's shows.