Sony’s own Marvel Cinematic Universe just got even bigger. First, a Venom solo movie starring Tom Hardy was announced, which is now filming, as a set video recently leaked, and now, we’re getting another movie, though this one is pretty unexpected. Morbius the Living Vampire will reportedly be getting his own solo outing.
According to a new report from THR, the writers of Power Rangers are working on the film:
The studio is developing Morbius, a feature project centered on Spider-Man antihero Morbius the Living Vampire. Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama, who worked on the recent Power Rangers movie, wrote the script, which was just submitted to the studio after a secret development process.
Details of Sony’s planned take on the character aren’t know, but according to the Marvel Encyclopedia:
Dr. Michael Morbius was a brilliant scientist born in Greece who became a Nobel Prize winning biochemist. He suffered from a debilitating blood disease and developed an experimental treatment involving vampire bats and electroshocks. Its side effects turned him into a pseudo-vampire who needed to consume blood in order to survive, and gained typical vampire characteristics such as an aversion to sunlight, and the powers of flight, enhanced strength, speed, and healing (a healing factor). His overall appearance changed as well: he gained fangs, his nose flattened to appear more bat-like, and his skin became extremely pale. Additionally, the victims of his bite would turn into living vampires themselves. When he first experienced the change, he killed the assistant who had helped him develop the treatment.
From the sounds of it, Sony is developing their own R-Rated Cinematic Universe for the characters they have the rights to, minus Spider-Man. While it won’t be set in the MCU, it’s still a pretty interesting strategy and one that could definitely pay off if they go about it the right way.
We know Blade probably won’t be a part of it, as it was confirmed that Marvel Studios currently have the rights to that character. Kevin Feige recently gave an update on the character, but not really said much:
“Someday. My tenure at Marvel started 17 years ago, and there were two things that sort of launched the modern era. One was X-Men, which was the first thing that people said, “Oh, there’s life here.” But a few years before that, there was Blade. A character nobody had heard of at all, had only appeared in a few issues of Tomb of Dracula or something, turned into a big franchise. That was always a great lesson for me, where you go, “It doesn’t matter how well known the character is, it matters how cool the movie is.” Which, many years later, would be the reason we do Guardians of the Galaxy, Doctor Strange. I think Blade is a legacy character now, and I think it would be fun to do something with him one day.”
Here’s hoping it all works out and we get some quality films.
Are you excited for a Morbius solo film? Be sure to tell us your thoughts in the comments!