Venom isn’t even out yet, but Sony’s moving forward on its Spider-Man spinoff movies. As you may’ve heard, comic book horror film Morbius has found its director in the form of Life‘s Daniel Espinosa and playing the titular bloodsucking anti-hero is Jared Leto. This will be his second superhero movie role after portraying the Joker in DC’s Suicide Squad.
After the news was widely reported yesterday, Leto confirmed his casting by posting some cover art featuring Morbius on his Twitter account. The actor shared the cover to the 2013 Marvel MAX series titled The Man Called Morbius from writer Joe Keating. He captioned the image with a simple but appropriate emoji: a black heart.
So, what can we gather from Leto’s choice of cover? Well, The Man Called Morbius is a solo series for the so-called Living Vampire that depicts him as a troubled, tragic figure rather than the supervillain that he was traditionally played as in classic Spider-Man comics. In particular, it sees Morbius escape from the Raft prison and attempt to get his vampiric nature under control. That sounds like it could be a solid plot for the movie adaptation, if not a little similar to the premise of Venom.
For those unfamiliar with the source material, Dr. Michael Morbius was a brilliant scientist who suffered from a rare blood disease. He tried to cure his condition with an experimental procedure involving vampire bat DNA and electroshock therapy, but it turned him into a “living vampire,” with a host of superhuman abilities and a constant thirst for blood.
Morbius apparently won’t affect Leto’s previous engagements to the DC Extended Universe, including the recently announced Joke solo movie that’s in the works. There’s no news on when it could go into production, but seeing as writers Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless are known to have handed in a draft, it’s likely Sony will get the ship sailing fairly soon. Maybe we’ll hear more after Venom hits theaters this October? Fingers crossed.