'Morbius' Is Definitely The Next Film In Sony's Spider-Man Universe

Venom was a monster hit, so there's no stopping Sony's Spider-Man Universe, or whatever the hell it's called, now. A Venom sequel is probably inevitable, but first up, Sony will get to work on their Morbius movie, starring Jared Leto. Sony producers Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach spilled the beans on some Morbius movie details, and confirmed the project will likely start shooting in around February 2019.Collider sat down with Avi Arad and Matt Tolmach and asked them for an update on the previously-announced Morbius movie starring Jared Leto. The producers first confirmed that the film was definitely happening next, and that Jared Leto was officially on board to play the Living Vampire. Morbius is the next entry in Sony's confusing Spider-Man Universe, which kicked-off this month with Venom. The studio also has Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse hitting theaters this year, but technically, that movie is set in a different universe, so good luck trying to make sense of all this.

"This is the great thing for us now," Arad tells Collider, "that an actor like [Jared Leto], and an actor like Tom [Hardy] wanted to have their own character. But the character they love. Both of them, very hard to get them to do a movie. You actually cannot get them. We went in, we sat with them, and everybody told us, 'Oh, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba.' Nothing. That's what he wanted to do."

The question that seems to keep arising for these movies is: will they be rated R? Fans were hoping for an R-rated Venom, but that didn't happen. Will Morbius bite the bullet and embrace an R rating? Arad and Tolmach are cagey on the subject. ""I don't think there's a rule written somewhere in stone that all of them have to be one thing, alright?" Tolmach says. "I think we've all talked about, 'Well, if one of these presents itself in a way...' Look, we have all seen, as you've said, the R-rated versions of these movies now working. So, that's out there. You can succeed to a staggering degree."

In short: if the Morbius movie warrants an R-rating, it might get one. Otherwise, you can probably expect a standard PG-13 rating here. Daniel Espinosa, the filmmaker behind Safe House and Life (a movie that many thought was going to be a secret Venom-prequel, but wasn't), will direct the film. Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama wrote the script, which will tell the story of Dr. Michael Morbius, is a Nobel Prize winning biochemist who, according to the Marvel wiki, suffers from "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."