DC Studios co-chief Peter Safran has confirmed that Batman is already active in Gotham during Clayface, even though he does not exactly make it to the screen. Gotham without its resident bat might sound peculiar, especially when the story follows one of his enemies. Yet James Gunn and Safran's DC Universe has been introducing characters in a less predictable order, allowing the city and its villains to exist before its caped protector receives a proper introduction.

The Dark Knight may be missing from the screen, but Safran insists he has not been missing from Gotham itself.

A Gotham-set villain origin story naturally invites one question: where is Batman while all this is happening? In an exclusive Collider interview, Peter Safran was asked whether audiences should imagine the vigilante operating elsewhere in the city. His answer was an uncomplicated.

“Yes,” he said. “We haven't really talked about what he's doing during the actual events of Clayface. But Batman is there,” Safran elaborated.  The distinction establishes his presence without turning a horror film into a superhero cameo hunt.

Safran called Clayface “the introduction to the live-action Gotham,” while speaking to Collider's Steve Weintraub, pointing out that Batman's silhouette had already appeared in Creature Commandos. The DCU's own Batman movie, The Brave and the Bold, remains in development. Robert Pattinson's Batman, meanwhile, belongs to Matt Reeves's separate continuity; The Batman does not provide this Gotham's backstory. Batman's whereabouts during Matt Hagen's ordeal remain unexplained.

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And that absence may be precisely what allows Gotham's latest nightmare to take centre stage without an intervention from its most famous resident.

Clayface takes place before Creature Commandos and Superman in the DCU chronology, making it an origin story for a villain viewers have already glimpsed in animation. Tom Rhys Harries plays Matt Hagen, an actor whose face is disfigured by a mobster. Desperate to recover his appearance and career, he undergoes an experimental procedure that instead turns his body into something horrifyingly malleable. His predicament is personal before it becomes superhuman.

Directed by James Watkins from a story developed by horror filmmaker Mike Flanagan, the R-rated DCU film also stars Naomi Ackie and arrives in theatres on October 23, 2026. Matt Reeves is among its producers, but the movie belongs to James Gunn and Peter Safran's main DCU, not Reeves's Batman saga. Its body-horror approach offers Gotham an identity beyond detective gadgets and rooftop confrontations. Batman may be working nearby, but this time the city has another troubled face worth watching.

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What did you think Batman was up to when Clayface was coming up? Let us know in the comments.