Morbius the Living Vampire star Jared Leto has hinted that filming on the Spider-Man and Venom spinoff movie will begin filming soon. The tease came in the form of a video the actor shared which featured Leto shaving off his facial hair for the role.

Making his debut in a 1971 issue of The Amazing Spider-Man, Morbius is a biochemist-turned-antihero with vampiric abilities and features. Now, he'll be the central character in a standalone film titled Morbius the Living Vampire, which Sony Picture and the producers behind Venom confirmed to be the next film in their own Marvel shared universe. Academy Award winner Jared Leto has been confirmed to lead the film since June of this year, and, after the box office success of Venom, Sony has grown confident in moving forward with a full slate of standalone Marvel films, including Silver and Black, a Venom sequel, Nightwatch, and Kraven, among others. Now, in anticipation of filming, Leto has gone clean-shaven for the Morbius role.

Related: All The Spider-Villain Movies Coming After Venom

On his personal Twitter account, Leto demonstrated a mild example of his transformation for his role in Morbius the Living Vampire with a short video. The video features Leto shaving his face with an electric razor in a comical fashion. Then, once he's completely clean-shaven, the video cuts away to a close-up image of Morbius' face (captioned with "#MORBIUS"), indicating that Leto is now physically prepared to embody the role of the "Living Vampire."

Aside from the fact that Morbius will be the second comic book villain/antihero that Leto will play after infamously portraying the Joker in Suicide Squadit's also worth noting that he won't be the first actor to transition from DC to Marvel. Before starring as the title character in Venom, Tom Hardy played Bane in The Dark Knight RisesIn fact, Hardy was originally cast in Suicide Squad as Rick Flagg before scheduling conflicts forced him to drop out of the film. As for Leto, though, his role in Morbius the Living Vampire won't apparently interfere with future appearances as the Joker.

Regardless of critical and fan reception to Venom, which was decidedly mixed, the strong box office returns of the film has evidently encouraged Sony to follow through with their Spider-Man movie universe - which, strangely enough, has not actually featured Spider-Man. At the moment, it's too early to predict how audiences will respond to Morbius the Living Vampire, not only because the character isn't as well-known as Venom, but because Leto's performance as the Joker wasn't especially well-received. For now, only time will tell whether or not Morbius can continue the unexpected success thus far from Sony's budding cinematic universe.

MORE: Jared Leto's Morbius Movie Villain Reportedly Revealed

Source: Jared Leto

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