Midnight Mass creator Mike Flanagan recently revealed that he pitched a Clayface movie set in the DC Extended Universe.
Flanagan touched on the unsuccessful DCEU proposal in an episode of the Script Apart podcast. "I went into Warner Bros. to have the meeting about DC," he said. "It was a general meeting with [producer] Jon Berg talking about whether there was anything in the DC Universe that I could be a fit for... I really want[ed] to do Clayface. I went in and said, 'You know, if you want to do some horror-leaning DC stuff, boy do I have a great take on Clayface. I'd love to do that movie.' And then if not, I wanted to talk about Scarecrow and Justice League Dark and Constantine, and I kind of threw everything up there and then said, 'As a child, I used to dress up as Superman, because that was my hero -- Christopher Reeve Superman was my hero.' And the meeting kind of went nowhere. [Berg] didn't really grab onto any of that stuff."
The Clayface movie isn't the only franchise-related project Flanagan has failed to get off the ground, either. In a previous episode of Script Apart, Flanagan confirmed that he has "a whole take" on the Nightmare on Elm Street series figured out, however, he doesn't know who to pitch it to. This is due to the complicated rights issues surrounding the property, which makes determining exactly who controls it unclear. As a result, Flanagan is apparently resigned to the fact that his hypothetical Nightmare on Elm Street movie won't become a reality any time soon.
Midnight Mass Creator Talks The Dark Tower
Fortunately for Flanagan, another of his dream projects is already moving forward. The filmmaker announced in December 2022 that he and his producing partner Trevor Macy had acquired the rights to The Dark Tower. This announcement reflected Flanagan's previously stated ambitions of overseeing an adaptation of Stephen King's multi-novel magnum opus that would succeed where 2017's Dark Tower movie failed. Flanagan recently addressed the impact of that film on his own Dark Tower project, arguing that it "did an enormous amount of damage" to the franchise's reputation within Hollywood circles.
However, Flanagan also seems optimistic that his take on The Dark Tower can overcome the negative impact of its big screen counterpart, even though the streaming series hasn't yet been sold to a distributor. "The Dark Tower doesn't have a studio," Flanagan said in a recent interview. "We don't have a partner on it yet, so I'm developing it myself, which is really a blast."
Source: Script Apart