‘Clayface’ Drops 57% and Loses No. 1 to an Elizabeth Holmes Doc: What Its Halloween Weekend Really Means
One weekend after Clayface opened at No. 1 with a rare A- CinemaScore, DC's first true horror movie got knocked off the top of the box office on Halloween weekend, and not by a slasher, a sequel or a ghost story. It lost by about $200,000 to You Can See Everything , A24's documentary about Elizabeth Holmes. Early estimates have James Watkins' body-horror origin story taking in $10.4 million in its second frame, down 57%, for a domestic total of $44.1 million, according to the Associated Press. TheWrap puts the worldwide total at $83 million after ten days.
On paper that sounds like a stumble. In context, it's more interesting than that. A 57% second-weekend drop is in line with how most front-loaded horror plays, Halloween landing on a Saturday hammered the whole marketplace, and Clayface was made for a fraction of what a superhero movie usually costs. Below we break down the numbers, compare them to recent horror and comic-book films, look at who made the movie and what they've said about it, and get into what this run really means for horror inside the DC Universe.
Watch the 'Clayface' Trailers
If you haven't seen the movie yet, here's the official teaser from DC, followed by the official trailer from Warner Bros. Pictures International.
The Halloween Weekend Numbers
Here's where things stand, based on Sunday estimates (final figures arrive Monday):
- Second weekend: about $10.4 million, No. 2 nationally, down 57% from opening (AP).
- Margin of defeat: roughly $200,684 behind You Can See Everything 's $10.6 million (AP).
- Domestic total: $44.1 million after ten days (AP).
- Worldwide total: about $83 million (TheWrap), which implies roughly $39 million from overseas by our math.
- Friday, Oct. 30: $3.25 million from 3,478 theaters, down 69% from opening Friday (The Numbers).
- Opening weekend (Oct. 23-25): $24.0 million from 3,458 theaters, plus about $19 million internationally (The Numbers, AP).
- Reported budget: $40 million per TheWrap and The Numbers; AP reports $44 million.
The whole market was soft. AP expects the weekend's total to land under $63 million, which would make it the third-lowest-grossing weekend of 2026. With Halloween falling on a Saturday, the biggest moviegoing day of most weekends turned into a night of parties, trick-or-treating and costume runs. That hurts a horror movie more than anything, because the people most likely to buy a ticket for an R-rated body-horror film are the same people dressed up as one.
The rest of the horror on the chart tells a similar story. Universal's Other Mommy , the Rob Savage-directed Jessica Chastain chiller, took in about $2.5 million at No. 7 in its fourth weekend; The Numbers had it at $53.9 million domestic and $100.6 million worldwide through Friday on a reported budget of around $19 million. Zach Cregger's Resident Evil also made about $2.5 million at No. 6 and has passed $155 million domestic and $385 million worldwide since its franchise-best $60.2 million opening in September. The only new horror wide release, Briarcliff's R-rated holiday horror-comedy Christmas at the Kringles , managed just $370,000 on Friday from 1,825 theaters.
The Movie It Lost To
Losing No. 1 to a documentary is unusual, but You Can See Everything isn't a normal documentary. Directed by Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim and released by A24, the Holmes film reportedly cost just $7 million and has already grossed $63.9 million domestically, which TheWrap says makes it the sixth-highest-grossing documentary ever in the U.S. and Canada. It was No. 2 behind Clayface last weekend and fell only 43% this time. It's a word-of-mouth phenomenon, and it was always going to hold better than a genre movie whose fans show up opening night.
So the headline "Clayface loses to a doc" is technically true and a little misleading. The two films essentially tied, and Clayface is still well ahead of where the doc stood after its own second weekend.
Who Made 'Clayface'
James Watkins directed. Horror fans know him from the 2008 survival nightmare Eden Lake , the 2012 Hammer ghost story The Woman in Black starring Daniel Radcliffe, and the 2024 Speak No Evil remake with James McAvoy. He's a filmmaker who builds dread out of ordinary people behaving badly, which makes him a smart fit for a villain origin story. In an AFP interview, he argued that body horror might be "one of the most relatable scares," and he told CinemaBlend he deliberately pulled back on one of the film's bloodiest scenes because he didn't want audiences walking out.
Mike Flanagan wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay with Hossein Amini . Flanagan is the creator behind The Haunting of Hill House , Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher , and his Prime Video Carrie series was just renewed for a second season. Amini's credits include Drive and the Watkins-directed BBC crime drama McMafia , which means the director and co-writer have worked together before.
Photo: Mike Flanagan via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license).
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In front of the camera, Welsh actor Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, a rising movie star who undergoes experimental facial surgery after a mob boss disfigures him. Naomi Ackie plays Dr. Caitlin Corr, and Max Minghella , best known for The Handmaid's Tale , plays John Borelli. David Dencik, Eddie Marsan and Rob Brydon round out the cast, and Aaron Paul turns up in a cameo as Jimmy Hagen. Harries told AFP that Clayface is a character uniquely suited to body horror, and joked that some costume store probably has clumps of his prosthetic face stuffed in its pockets.
Photo: Max Minghella via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license).
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The producers are Matt Reeves, Lynn Harris, James Gunn and Peter Safran. The film is rated R for strong bloody violence, gore, language, some nudity and brief drug use, and runs 108 minutes.
How We Got Here
Clayface is the third film in Gunn and Safran's rebooted DC Universe, after Superman and Supergirl , and the first to go all-in on horror. Warner Bros. originally dated it for Sept. 11, 2026, then moved it to Oct. 23, right into the heart of spooky season. That move made sense on paper, but it also put the film's crucial second weekend directly on top of Halloween night.
Critically, it landed in decent shape. Rotten Tomatoes currently has it at 77% from 206 reviews, with a 94% audience score, and the site's consensus calls it a slow starter that turns into a gross, satisfying revenge thriller. Metacritic had it at 59 during release week. For reference, Slashfilm noted that Superman sits at 83% on Rotten Tomatoes and Supergirl at 52%. Audiences liked it more than critics did, and the A- CinemaScore is excellent for horror, a genre where a B is normal and a C is common.
Gunn has been clear about how he wants people to see it. In Threads posts reported by Variety, he described the film as "a great, fun horror movie unto itself," and stressed that audiences don't need DC homework to enjoy it.
By the Numbers: How a 57% Drop Stacks Up
Horror is the most front-loaded genre in Hollywood. Fans show up on night one, and the second weekend almost always falls hard. Here's how Clayface 's drop compares to recent horror and comic-book films (opening / second weekend / drop / domestic total, per The Numbers unless noted):
- Smile 2 (2024): $23.0M / $9.5M / -59% / $69.0M. Same pre-Halloween slot, nearly the same opening.
- Black Phone 2 (2025): $27.3M / $12.9M / -53% / $77.4M.
- Venom (2018): $80.3M / $35.0M / -56% / $213.5M.
- The New Mutants (2020): $7.0M / $3.0M / -57% / $23.9M.
- Final Destination Bloodlines (2025): $51.6M / $19.4M / -63% / $138.3M.
- Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (2025): $64.0M / $19.4M / -70%.
- Morbius (2022): $39.1M / $10.2M / -74%, which JoBlo reported as the biggest second-weekend drop ever for a comic-book movie.
- Weapons (2025): $43.5M / $24.5M / -44% / $151.6M.
- Sinners (2025): $48.0M / $45.7M / -5% / $280.0M, the freak exception.
Put simply, Clayface held the way a normal, well-liked horror movie holds. It did a little better than Smile 2 , matched Venom almost exactly, and was nowhere near the collapse of Morbius. It just didn't do what Weapons and Sinners did, where word of mouth turned a movie into an event.
What This Really Means
It's on track to make money. The usual industry rule of thumb is that a film needs to gross roughly two and a half times its production budget worldwide to break even once marketing and the theaters' cut are factored in. With a reported $40 million to $44 million budget, that puts the line somewhere around $100 million to $110 million worldwide. At $83 million after ten days, Clayface should get there. Our own rough estimate, using the multipliers of Smile 2 and Black Phone 2 as a guide, puts its final domestic total somewhere in the high $50 millions to low $60 millions. Marketing costs haven't been reported, so treat that as a ballpark, not a verdict.
It proves the mid-budget DC model can work. This is the real story. For years, comic-book movies were all-or-nothing bets costing $200 million or more. Clayface is a genre film priced like a genre film, closer to Smile 2 than to The Flash. A $24 million opening would be a disaster for a $250 million superhero movie. For a $40 million R-rated horror film, it's a solid start, and the A- CinemaScore says the people who went were happy. That's exactly the outcome Gunn and Safran would want if they plan to make more smaller, scarier DC films.
The calendar did it no favors. Moving from September into late October looked like a gift. In practice, Clayface opened opposite a breakout doc, spent its second weekend competing with actual Halloween, and arrived after Other Mommy and Resident Evil had already soaked up a lot of horror spending this fall. Back in October we argued that horror doesn't need October anymore, and this weekend is another data point.
Overseas is the swing factor. International audiences delivered about $19 million on opening weekend, close to the domestic number. Superhero brands usually travel well, but horror tends to be more local. If foreign markets keep pace with North America, the film finishes comfortably in profit. If they fade faster, it gets tighter.
What Comes Next
The good news for Clayface is that November is thin on horror. Next weekend brings Warner Bros.' own The Cat in the Hat and the monster movie Godzilla Minus Zero , which will likely grab premium-format screens and some of the genre audience. Ti West's dark Christmas Carol riff Ebenezer arrives Nov. 13, and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping takes over Nov. 20. Without Halloween night competing for attention, a third-weekend drop in the 40% range is realistic.
Questions we still can't answer: Warner Bros. hasn't announced a premium video-on-demand date, there's no official word on a Clayface sequel, and nobody at DC Studios has said whether Tom Rhys Harries' Matt Hagen will appear elsewhere in the DCU. Final weekend numbers arrive Monday, and we'll be watching whether the ten-day worldwide total holds above $80 million.
The Bottom Line
Clayface didn't win Halloween weekend, but it didn't flop either. It dropped like a normal horror movie, tied a documentary in a dead marketplace, and is on course to earn back its modest budget. The bigger takeaway is that DC finally made a horror film that horror fans liked, at a price that lets it succeed without being a phenomenon. If that's the template, we'd happily take more.
Did you see Clayface yet, and should DC make more R-rated horror movies like it? Tell us in the comments.
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Header photo: Mike Flanagan via Wikimedia Commons ( author and license), cropped with text added.
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