Halloween may be over, but there’s no shortage of frickin’ bats in Sony’s much-delayed, MCU-adjacent (or is it?) movie based on Marvel’s mysterious living vampire, Morbius. Watch the new trailer now:
It stars Jared Leto as Dr Michael Morbius, a man on the verge of death from a rare blood condition who is given a new lease of life after a run-in with a huge swarm of bats – he can’t remember the details, and they’re unclear to us from this trailer. This transformation leaves him with a range of powers – super strength and speed, ‘bat radar’, and some kind of vibration-based flying – but also urges to hunt and consume blood. Nightmare.
Blurring the lines between hero and villain, Morbius is clearly taking inspiration from a certain other Spider-Man antagonist, Venom, and doesn’t pull any punches in making it clear the two are set in the same universe. In one scene, a police officer says “We haven’t had anything this good since that thing in San Francisco”, aka. Eddie Brock’s home city, not to mention Morbius’ “I am Venom” wisecrack at the end of the trailer.
Those aren’t the only Easter eggs to be found – a cityscape at night features an Oscorp building, Michael Keaton pops up and is credited in the film as his Spider-Man: Homecoming character Adrian Toomes, and we get a glance at Spidey-specific newspaper The Daily Bugle. The Bugle front page includes a headline about a ‘Rhino on the loose’, which could potentially hint at an appearance from Rhino, yet another of Peter Parker’s enemies, played by Paul Giamatti in The Amazing Spider-Man 2. There's also a glimpse at some Spider-Man graffiti with the word 'Murderer' scrawled across it, potentially relating to Tom Holland's Peter being accused of killing Mysterio in Far From Home. So many Spider-Men, and yet so little idea about what awaits us.
After a certain post-credit sting at the end of Venom: Let There Be Carnage – scroll away now if you’re yet to see it – could Morbius also swoop into the MCU for real? We have a few months to wait to find out, although Spider-Man: No Way Home, originally due for release way after Morbius in pre-pandemic times, could give us some answers before then.
Morbius arrives in UK cinemas on 28 January 2022.