DC Studios’ Clayface took the top spot at the North American box office on its first weekend, with about $24 million from 3,458 theaters between Friday, October 23, and Sunday, October 25. Weekend figures published on Sunday put the figure between $24 million and $24.5 million, which sits under the $25 million to $35 million range that pre-release tracking had projected.
The overseas side added roughly $22.5 million, for a global start of around $46.5 million. Warner Bros. distributes the film, the third feature in the rebooted DC Universe and its first with an R rating.
Co-chief James Gunn pointed to a different number. Opening-night audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an A-minus, and Gunn posted the grade on Threads with the comment “Really proud of this.” He added that “Sinners is the only horror movie to have EVER gotten an A Cinemascore.”
What $24 million buys a $30 million to $44 million film
The economics here are unusual for a comic-book release. Reported production budgets for Clayface range from $30 million to $44 million, a fraction of what a standard superhero film costs. Take the top of that range: a $46.5 million worldwide start already exceeds the stated production cost, though marketing spend and the cinemas’ share of ticket money are not included in that comparison.
Per screen, the arithmetic is $24,000,000 divided by 3,458 theaters, or roughly $6,940 per location for the three days. That is a workable average rather than a spectacular one.
Audience makeup skewed young. According to the opening-weekend breakdown, 73% of ticket buyers were aged 18 to 34, and Hispanic and Latino moviegoers made up 35% of the crowd.
The smallest No. 1 since early September
Placed against the rest of the fall, the opening is modest. Ranked by gross, the eight weekend winners since early September line up like this:
- Resident Evil (September 20): $60.2 million
- Verity (October 4): $32.0 million
- Street Fighter (October 18): $30.8 million
- Practical Magic 2 (September 13): $30.0 million
- Other Mommy (October 11): $27.8 million
- Avengers Endgame: Encore (September 27): $26.1 million
- Clayface (October 25): $24.0 million
- Spider-Man: Brand New Day (September 6, in its sixth straight week on top): $18.2 million
That makes Clayface the lowest-grossing weekend winner since September 6, when a holdover in its sixth week led the chart. It also opened below Other Mommy, a horror film that audiences graded D-plus.
A documentary nearly took the weekend
The closest challenger was A24’s You Can See Everything, the Nathan Fielder documentary, which climbed about 25% in its second weekend to $19.5 million after widening to 2,655 theaters. Its running domestic total reached $45.1 million. Its $15.6 million debut a week earlier had already been the biggest weekend for a documentary since Fahrenheit 9/11 in June 2004.
Laika’s new feature Wildwood opened third with $11 million to $11.6 million. Last weekend’s winner, Street Fighter, fell 72% to $8.6 million in fourth, and the Alexander Skarsgård fantasy romance Wicker placed fifth with about $5.75 million from just 1,471 theaters.
How the film got here
Writer Mike Flanagan pitched a Clayface movie to Gunn and producer Peter Safran in March 2023. Scheduling conflicts kept him from directing, so James Watkins, director of Speak No Evil (2024), took over, with Hossein Amini rewriting Flanagan’s script. Tom Rhys Harries, cast in June 2025 after a search Safran estimated covered “hundreds” of actors, plays Matt Hagen, a disfigured actor whose body is turned to clay by an experimental treatment. Naomi Ackie plays the scientist behind it, with Max Minghella, David Dencik and Eddie Marsan in support.
Filming ran from August 31 to November 1, 2025, largely in Liverpool, England, with the city’s Law Courts building standing in for Gotham Hospital. Warner Bros. originally dated the film for September 11, 2026, then moved it to October 23 in February to place it in the Halloween corridor.
Critics were warmer than the opening: 75% of 161 reviews counted on Rotten Tomatoes are positive, while Metacritic’s score is 59 out of 100, which it labels mixed or average.
Halloween on a Saturday
The next frame is awkward for every studio. Halloween falls on Saturday, October 31, the first Saturday Halloween since 2020, and wide releases are thin as a result. That leaves Clayface and You Can See Everything, separated by about $4.5 million this weekend, to contest the No. 1 spot again on the October 30 to November 1 weekend.
Further reading
Image: Sara Komatsu, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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