For most of the last decade, a DC movie was judged against the billion-dollar ceiling of the superhero boom. Clayface was built to be measured differently: a body-horror film about a second-tier Batman villain, made for a fraction of a tentpole budget and sold on scenes that audiences watch through their fingers. Its opening weekend suggests the smaller bet works, and it hands the newly combined Paramount-Warner Bros its second consecutive win at the global box office.

As Deadline reported, the James Watkins film, written by Mike Flanagan and Hossein Amini, landed a little below the studio’s worldwide target but comfortably against what it cost, and its audience scores were unusually strong for horror. DC Studios bosses James Gunn and Peter Safran reportedly covered their faces the first time they watched it, and Deadline argues that the grossness is precisely what fans and moviegoers are responding to.

The global opening came to $43M, short of the $45M the studio had hoped for but solid for a film with a net cost of $44M before prints and advertising. North America contributed $24M, enough for first place there, while $19M came from 76 international territories. The A- exit grade puts it in a small club of horror titles that earned the same mark, alongside Get Out, Weapons and Obsession.

The closest yardstick is Universal and Blumhouse Atomic Monster’s Other Mommy, which opened to $45.6M worldwide from 50 territories weeks earlier. Clayface edged its overseas start, $19M against $17.8M, and matched or beat it in the UK ($2.6M), Australia, France and Brazil, but trailed in Mexico, Italy and Spain. It also took $593K in Germany and $589K in South Korea, two markets Other Mommy has yet to reach.

The merged studio holds second place too. Legendary and Capcom’s Street Fighter, which led North America a weekend earlier, added $16.8M worldwide in its second frame for a $76.3M running total, despite a 72% drop at home. It is a useful pair for Skydance film chiefs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein, who inherited the Warner Bros. slate after the exit of Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy.

Deadline asked whether Disney should be worried; the nearer threat is smaller. A24’s You Can See Everything, the three-hour Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim documentary, ran second in North America with nearly $20M and could take the top spot over the quieter Halloween frame. It opens in Australia on November 12 and the UK on November 20, with Sony handling most foreign markets. Deadline hears that Australia’s Palace Cinemas has already doubled its single-day presales record, set by Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour.

Deadline expects Warner Bros. Animation’s The Cat in the Hat to put the combined studio back at No. 1 in the first weekend of November. If it does, the run will have been built from a video game brawler, a DC body-horror film and a Dr. Seuss cat, three bets with nothing in common but the logo now on their release slate.

Tags: James Gunn, box-office, DC Studios, Skydance, Clayface, Paramount-Warner Bros

Clayface wins small: a $43M global bow gives merged Paramount-Warner Bros a second straight No. 1

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