Whether we like or not — the Sony-Verse is expanding — and with it, the crossover potential has “endless possibilities,” according to Morbius director Daniel Espinosa.
The superhero film that hits theaters next month centers around a renowned biochemist, Jared Leto’s Michael Morbius, who inadvertently turns himself into a vampire after conducting an experimental treatment on himself in a bid to cure his rare blood disease.
Setting aside the comic book origins, the premise does have potential, in a classic Universal monster movie sort of way. However, it remains to be seen if the film will succumb to the kind of franchise fatigue that seemingly doomed the Sony-produced Andrew Garfield reboot of the webslinger in The Amazing Spider-Man and its sequel.
In the comics, the character is originally a villain opposite Spider-Man. But in the tradition of 2018’s Venom, and its sequel last year starring Tom Hardy, Morbius will serve as a solo tale about the antihero, wherein he is the main character.
To be clear, the Sony-Verse is the same universe where the Venom films take place. But the Marvel Cinematic Universe, where Spider-Man: No Way Home took place, is in a separate universe — though there was some crossover happening, due to Venom making a brief foray into the MCU in the behemoth blockbuster.
When asked by Screen Rant about whether some version of Spider-Man exists in the same universe as Venom and Morbius, Espinosa teased that there are many possibilities for more characters to come into the fold later on, the director said.
“If you remember, when Sony released [Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse], they introduced the idea of different timelines that then later Kevin Feige with Marvel took up. It is an idea that has existed with the studio for a long time. We are in what some people call the Venom-Verse. But these worlds have endless possibilities of interacting and trading people or information. Who knows what the future will hold?”
To make things slightly more confusing, Michael Keaton’s Adrian Toomes, aka Vulture, is set to reprise his role as the villain in Morbius. But Keaton’s Vulture is originally from the MCU, a separate timeline from the Sony-Verse, so it remains to be seen if the character is a crossover or perhaps a variant.
Morbius comes to theaters April 1.