It seems utterly bizarre to expect the general public to have some awareness of Morbius the living vampire, a relatively minor supporting character from the Spider-Man comics, but that’s what Sony is hoping to accomplish with director Daniel Espinosa’s Morbius movie. The film will star Jared Leto as the living vampire himself, with the project reportedly moving forward much faster now thanks to the massive success of Tom Hardy’s Venom movie—which also centered on a character from Spider-Man comics but didn’t feature Spidey himself. Leto’s involvement in Morbius reportedly came from his desire to have a specific comic book character he could make his own (unlike the Joker, presumably, since DC isn’t exclusively handing him to Leto).
That’s all we’ve known about Morbius for a while, but now Variety is reporting that former Doctor Who star Matt Smith has joined the cast. We don’t know who he’s playing, and since we don’t know anything about what the movie’s planing and the character doesn’t even have the famous-ish supporting cast that someone like Venom does, we can’t even really guess who he’ll be. Maybe some kind of bad scientist who is involved in turning Morbius from a regular guy to a vampire-y guy? Variety says Smith will have a “major role,” but that still doesn’t help. Maybe he’s Spider-Man? That would be a wild twist.
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I’m very happy about this. I understand I am in the minority on this one, but Morbius was my favorite comic as a kid. I had the complete run of the early 90s series, and the whole Midnight Suns and Maximum Carnage crossovers. The Morbius comic was way darker than most at the time, and had some really crazy stuff even by comic book standards. Morbius was an interesting character that just didn’t mesh too well with the more mainstream characters. He was never going to be a top seller so it looks like they got a lot more leeway to do what they wanted with the comic. I lost all my originals. My father took all my comics and magic cards away as some sort of punishment, and they all got wet. Todays value would be 10k+ for what he destroyed.
I just recently bought the 2013 run of Morbius, but have not read it yet.
I want to say something like “Im sorry for your loss” but that sounds so incredibly cheesy. I can sympathize though. I had a similar experience with a bow and arrow I made as a kid, and while I don’t really blame my parents, it still stings today.
1. I really want Leto to just disappear. Outside of being a general creep and weirdo (his “antics” on sets are basically harassment at this point) there’s still allegations about him.2. Matt Smith still easily has the worst post-Who career of any major star on that show. Pretty much all his stuff bar Crown has bombed or been unmemorable.
Leto just bugs the every-loving shit out of me onscreen, never mind his antics. His spacey weirdo in Blade Runner completely took me out of the movie.
He’s such a shit actor but his method schtick and one performance years ago means he gets cast constantly.He annoys me more than Joaquin Phoenix, who is neither over the top enough to be as likable as Cage nor talented enough to be the next Daniel Day-Lewis as he wants to be.
I think Joaquin walks the line between Cage and Day-Lewis well enough, I could see him leaning one way or the other a bit more as he gets older though and I look forward to either. But yeah Leto is the fuckin’ worst.
In a better world than this one, Matt Smith was cast as Newt Scamander in the Fantastic Beasts movies. He would have slayed in that role.
All we need to do is fire Jared Leto into the sun and 10% of the world’s problems will be solved.
I liked him a fair bit in that Ryan Gosling-directed movie (which I assume has the distinction of being the only movie to crossover stars from Doctor Who, Agents of SHIELD and Saoirse fuckin’ Ronan) but yeah, he’s just not getting the roles he should be getting (edit: which is a shame as he was the best Doctor)
At least he’ll be in Star Wars Episode 9 at the very least. Not expecting anything great but at least it’s something notable.Although speaking of SHIELD if they could have gotten him to recur on that show I’m sure they could find something cool for him to do. Like if he was Mephisto or something that’d be some cool shit.
All the Leto stuff on Suicide Squad was made up, you realise that right – who in their right mind would work with someone doing any of that.Also Matt Smith:Christopher and his KindThe CrownLost RiverAll great choices and performances.
Vampire/2 + Spider-man – Spider-man + Jared Leto = skeptical. I was a 90’s comic kid who loved Spider-Man, and as a result, I would like this movie to be good. It’s not impossible to imagine a good Morbius movie, and adding Matt Smith doesn’t hurt. The whole ‘no Spider-Man, yes Jared Leto’ thing makes me less than optimistic.
Matt Smith is gonna look so hot.
I can’t wait to see him use his suction cup hands to extract plasma from his victims!
I recall the appearances of Morbius form the 70s/early 80s. I thought the concept was interesting — a vampire of sorts created by science who wasn’t truly undead. But dang, talk about a third-stringer…
Arrrggggghhhhh. Why Jared Leto?? Sony, you’re fucking up again. I can just imagine He Jared sitting around, thinking ” I need my own superhero role…I’ve done the Joker and CRUSHED IT, now I need a Marvel role but can’t get in with the big boys …… Ahha, I’ll simply hitch my method acting cart to Sony Pictures and get a Spiderman adjacent role, like Paul Giamatti! Or Jamie Foxx!! Morbius is MINE!!!”. Or something like that.
If I were writing the script for this movie, confusion between Morbius, late French avant-garde comics artist Moebius, and German mathematician Möbius (of the eponymous strip) would be a major plot point. Sadly, Sony will probably play this one straight, and it will be dumb.
It seems utterly bizarre to expect the general public to have some awareness of Morbius the living vampire, a relatively minor supporting character from the Spider-Man comicsBut a big part of the animated series from the 90s so it has nostalgia appeal to a fair few number of people.
Mart Smith should be Morbius instead.
Cast your mind back to the ‘dim time’ when they made movies about nominally regular people in nominally regular situations, not comic book superheroes trying to forestall the end of mankind over and over and over again.
Semi-off topic, but this obviously means it’s time to make Dracula the Big Bad of MCU Phase 4.