In a bout of bad luck, Sony’s Spider-Man-verse (Venom-verse?) vampire movie Morbius has been delayed yet again. The film, which was set to finally come out this month, has been pushed to April 1 in the midst of a new wave of COVID-19 cases. Originally meant for a summer release in 2020, the movie has been shifting every couple of months since the world shut down back in March 2020, until finally seemingly having a release date set for January 2022.

But then, the Omicron variant came and delayed the introduction of Michael Morbius (played by Jared Leto) yet again. Frankly, it sucks—not because I’m super excited about Morbius. I’m lukewarm with an open-heart about it, but I also just want to see how it ties into the world of Spider-Man. But with each new pushback, it is losing the interest of those who were barely there to begin with, and it isn’t exactly any fault of Michael Morbius.

Still, this new move to April may give Morbius a better chance to reach more audiences, since many don’t want to go into movie theaters right now and, by April, that might be differentIf anything, with Spider-Man: No Way Home still in theaters, many would probably put their luck there rather than risking their lives for Michael Morbius.

Vulture questions

My main point of interest with this movie is simply wondering why Michael Keaton, as Adrian Toomes, shows up at the end of the movie. Before Spider-Man: No Way Home, theories suggested that all the standalone Spider-Man “villain” movies that Sony was working on would then be canon in the Marvel Cinematic Universe through No Way Home’s multiverse antics, but that now seems to not be the case, meaning that we just have Morbius on his own with his own version of Toomes? Is Michael Keaton just Adrian Toomes in every universe? Because if that’s the case, then I love that.

It isn’t as simple as “Oh, Michael Morbius is just in Tom Holland’s universe,” either, because the trailer includes an in-universe depiction of Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man, and there are other nods to Andrew Garfield’s universe. Basically, this movie seems like a mishmash of all the universes of Spider-Man thrown into one, and I need to know why.

But every time I try to get excited about it, it gets pushed back. Granted, this movie is being delayed because of a pandemic (unlike The New Mutants, which was delayed less but was constantly delayed because it is a bad movie). So would we have already seen Morbius if it weren’t for COVID-19? Yes. But now it’s just constantly being pushed to get the best chance at making money, and while I’m happy they’re not just giving up, I do just want to know where this movie exists in the larger universe of Sony/the MCU.

(image: Marvel Entertainment)

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