Sony's Morbius movie trailer has been rated and is expected to arrive very soon. Although the studio currently shares Peter Parker with the MCU, Sony has started to develop a Spider-Man universe of its own lately. Based around the web-slinger's antiheroes and enemies, the franchise kicked off with the box office success of Venom back in October 2018 and has solo films led by Nightwatch, Kraven the Hunter, Black Cat, and Silver Sable in different stages of development. Up next, however, is Michael Morbius, who's better known by his super-powered alias Morbius the Living Vampire.
Jared Leto stars as Morbius' namesake, a scientist whose attempt to cure himself of a rare blood disease goes very wrong when he afflicts himself with a form of vampirism instead. This is, of course, the second recent major comic book tentpole for the Oscar-winner following his polarizing turn as the Joker in David Ayer's Suicide Squad (a role he isn't expected to reprise in the near future, if ever again). Sony has yet to release any official images or footage of Leto in character for the movie, but that should change within the next week or so.
According to Trailer-Track, the first Morbius trailer (which reportedly runs just over two and a half minutes long) has been rated by the Alberta Film Ratings and should be arriving within a matter of days. The trailer will almost undoubtedly premiere in theaters with Sony's Bad Boys for Life when the sequel opens next week, so it should drop online sometime before then.
Even more than Venom, it's presumed Morbius will be a darker superhero movie with more than a touch of body horror. Case in point: the film was written by Lost in Space showrunners Matt Sazama and Berk Sharpless, whose previous credits include 2014's very superhero-esque take on Count Dracula, Dracula Untold. Equally, Morbius was directed by Daniel Espinosa, a filmmaker who tends to specialize in macabre genre fare like the dramatic thriller Child 44 and the sci-fi horror offering Life (a film many half-joked could've easily been the secret prequel to Venom). Interestingly, Morbius is one of two Marvel comic book movies opening in 2020 that combines superhero and horror tropes, along with April's The New Mutants.
Commercially-speaking, Morbius is far less of a surefire bet than Venom was. The character himself is mostly unknown outside of the dedicated comic book-reading community, and Leto is similarly less bankable than Tom Hardy when it comes to selling the masses on a Spider-Man spinoff project. That's all the more reason, then, for Sony to get the movie's marketing up and going this month, well ahead of Morbius' scheduled release date in July. Assuming the footage is well-received, it should start to generate a lot more hype for what's currently one of this year's more intriguing superhero films, but also one of its more questionable and possibly unreliable ones.
Source: Trailer-Track
