Morbius ($126 Million Worldwide Box Office)

Spider-Man’s web just got wider.

Sony has tapped Jared Leto to star in the spinoff “Morbius,” based on the Spidey villain of the same name. Sources also tell Variety that “Safe House” director Daniel Espinosa will helm the movie.

Leto has been loosely attached to the project for some time, but wouldn’t fully commit until he knew the film was headed in the right direction.

He asked to meet with several of the filmmakers who were up for the job. Espinosa met with Leto last month in Germany while Leto was touring with his band Thirty Seconds to Mars, which eventually led to him nabbing the job.

Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach are producing “Morbius” with Lucas Foster.

The film was penned by the team of Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama, who worked on Netflix’s “Lost in Space” series. Palak Patel will oversee the pic for the studio.

Morbius was created in 1971 by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane for “The Amazing Spider-Man #101.” The character was a scientist who tried to cure himself of a blood disease, with tragic results. He became afflicted with vampiric traits such as fangs and a thirst for blood — and wound up battling Spider-Man.

Morbius appeared sporadically in Marvel Comics in the subsequent years and was revived in the 1992 series “Morbius, the Living Vampire,” which had a run of 32 issues through April of 1995.

Sony has not dated the film, but the movie will likely be slated soon as production is expected to start sometime this year. With “Venom” bowing in October and “Spider-Man: Far From Home” launching next year, Sony hopes this latest project fits in well with the others.

Leto is no stranger to the comic book world, having already played the Joker in 2016’s “Suicide Squad.” Besides promoting his new album “America” with Thirty Seconds to Mars, Leto has been busy setting up a film slate that includes a solo Joker movie at Warner Bros. Sources say this film does not affect that role. The Oscar winner was also recently seen in Netflix’s “The Outsider” and “Blade Runner 2049.”

Espinosa has strong ties to Sony after directing the sci-fi thriller “Life” starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds, and is also developing the Afghanistan War pic “Red Platoon” for the studio.

Rusty wrote:Haha.

Who in the fuck wants a Morbius movie?

Tyger wrote:Wait, Keaton appears so this is in the same Spider-Man universe?

Tyger wrote:Yeah I caught that but it’s easy to take back, same actor as same character isn’t.

UltimateMarvel wrote:Ok, trailer is a little long but really good. This looks way better than Venom.

WyldeMan wrote:Critics and early viewers alike are eviscerating Morbius with the general consensus being that its a "boring snooze fest' and one of Leto's worst performances of his career.

One of the more pointed comments read that it played like “A Spider-Man spin-off written with a crayon and edited with a chainsaw.”

UltimateMarvel wrote:Leto can't catch a break. I think he should stay out of the superhero business. He used to be great in drama movies but his latest movie The Little Things was disappointing. With the right script, I think he does really well.

Trailers made it look like this movie was going to be better than the Venom movies but I guess it's equally garbage.

Rusty wrote:Problem with superhero movies is that even if they fucking suck, you can easily make some good money from it. Especially if you have a name.

If a reputable film actor want's do something more satisfying, they do a HBO series. If they want a quick easy big bag of cash, they do a superhero movie.

Jared Leto is notorious for his interpretation of “Method acting” to mean behaving weird in the hopes that it will translate to making his portrayal of say, famed long-distance runner Steve Prefontaine seem that much more authentic. Leaving aside that the idea of Method acting has been debated, water-down, and misinterpreted so often that it is essentially meaningless, it seems that the star of Dallas Buyers Club might have actually gone a little too far in his off-camera behavior while filming the recent Sony Pictures comic book adaptation Morbius. According to an interview in Uproxx, director Daniel Espinosa confirmed rumors that Leto had insisted on using crutches on set at all times, even when taking a bathroom break. Apparently, the sheer amount of time it took the able-bodied actor to do this began to interfere with the production schedule of the film, and Espinosa and Leto came to a compromise…that Leto would use a wheelchair instead.

Basically, people are calling out Jared Leto for not only presumably making the lives of all the non-famous people on set who are trying to do their jobs and have to be slowed down by his actor’s needs, but also for the perceived insensitivity of an actor who himself does not have a disability performing as though he does. There has been more and more discussion in the film industry in recent years about who can play what roles and who should not (that has arguments on many sides, often from unexpected people), and Leto is definitely stepping right into it. This is also not the first time that Jared Leto has pulled this exact move. Director Denis Villeneuve stated that while filming Blade Runner 2049 (in which Leto has a small role as a blind tech genius), the actor decided to actually wear opaque contact lenses and make himself effectively blind while on set, which of course also necessitated some personal assistant guide him around constantly.

Then there is the infamous case of Jared Leto’s behavior while filming 2016’s Suicide Squad, where in order to play a fictional murder clown, he reportedly sent his coworkers sexually suggestive materials and mutilated animals. While the exact details of what went down have become muddied (with Leto himself both saying that “you don’t like it, basically, you can kiss my ass” and implying most of the incidents were exaggerations by the media, despite him personally stating what he did in a live red carpet interview), it definitely is part of a pattern. The appropriateness of actors being praised for portraying disabled people (while disabled people are themselves rarely hired for such roles), and the artistic merit of needing to disrupt production to such a degree is certainly up for debate. Jared Leto has made it clear that he feels it is necessary for his “process” of acting, but we will have to see whether it catches up to him at some point. While the directors of Morbius and Blade Runner 2049 both posit it as a remarkable and interesting thing Leto was doing, it will just have to remain in the court of public opinion for now.

UltimateMarvel wrote:I knew about the Suicide Squad stuff but the rest is fucking crazy and disrespectful to the production crew. He shouldn't get cancelled but he needs to answer for his behavior.