Although it’s still a week away, Mike Flanagan, the writer-director behind multiple popular horror movies and TV series, has given fans an explicit sign that he’s seen and liked Clayface, a film he helped create and co-write. Flanagan posted on his official Letterboxd account with a heart, signaling he liked it. Flanagan’s credit includes a story/by credit and a co-writing credit, which he shares with Hossein Amini.

Clayface’s director, James Watkins, also recently discussed Flanagan’s role on the film in an interview with Screen Rant, where he went into detail about how much of Flanagan’s original script was included in the final film. “Well, the bones of Mike’s script obviously were the reason why I wanted to do the project,” Watkins said, “He wrote this kind of—I thought it was the tragedy, I guess, the arc of Matt Hagen and the relationship with Caitlin and the idea of how this man becomes a monster. So really, that didn’t change.” Watkins then went into even more detail, saying:

“It was more like how to finesse elements within it. And that always naturally happens when you’re developing a project. You learn stuff talking to the actors, things change in shooting, things often change in post. So it was just trying to find the kind of—lean into some of the areas.

Watkins then went into even further detail, saying:

It was more like how to finesse elements within it. And that always naturally happens when you’re developing a project. You learn stuff talking to the actors, things change in shooting, things often change in post. So it was just trying to find the kind of—lean into some of the areas.” He explained that he “leaned into a couple of things, for example, with Matt. I wanted to make sure that it was very clear, in terms of him being really relatable up front, that this wasn’t just a story of vanity.”

Clayface follows Matt Hagen, an actor whose attack by the mob leaves his face disfigured, and he ends up going through an experimental cosmetic surgery that starts turning his body into something clay-like and malleable. The film is the first true stand-alone project set in James Gunn and Peter Safran’s DCU. The film will be released in theaters on Friday, October 23.