Yes, Jared Leto has already played The Joker in the DC Comics movie Suicide Squad (and will reprise his role in Suicide Squad 2 and a standalone Joker movie for Warner Bros.). But now the Oscar nominated actor is moving over to Marvel to play the villain Morbius in a big screen Spiderman spin-off for Sony Pictures.
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.
The Morbius movie was written by the team of Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama, who worked on Netflix’s “Lost in Space” series, which didn’t get many good reviews.
Production is expected to start sometime this year. With Venom arriving in October and Spider-Man: Far From Home launching next year, Sony hopes this latest project fits in well with the others.
The director of the film, Daniel Espinosa, has strong ties to Sony since directing the sci-fi thriller Life starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Ryan Reynolds. He is also developing the Afghanistan War movie Red Platoon for the studio.
