Jared Leto Led ‘Spider-Man’ Spin-off ‘Morbius’ Is Somehow Still Happening, Adds Former ‘Doctor Who’ Star Matt Smith

Sony recently had success with their first Spider-Man spin-off Venom, proving to the studio that having a good script and likable characters are less important to a film’s success than having the Marvel fanfare in the first minute, so it’s full steam ahead on the Jared Leto film Morbius. If you’re not familiar with the Spider-Man villain, he’s a scientist who turns himself into a vampire because basically all of Spider-Man’s villains are either scientists or engineers who turn themselves into something. Or in one case just wear a mask to stalk his girlfriend. Empire State University’s STEM department should really start screening applicants to make sure they’re not evil.

Morbius is being played by Jared Leto, so if you thought his method acting was insufferable when he was just sending people dead pigs and wearing contacts to make himself blind, well, wait until he tries to suck the life-blood out of his co-stars’ necks.

One of those co-stars, we found out today from The Hollywood Reporter, is going to be Matt Smith, who has signed on to play an undisclosed role which is probably Spencer Smythe, the British roboticist (see what I mean?) who built the Spider Slayer robots.

Morbius is one of those minor characters who is better left in the past but had a comeback in the 90s for about 10 minutes in the Spider-Man crossover Maximum Carnage, which was the basis for a SNES game with a sick red cartridge. He also showed up on the Fox Spider-Man cartoon where, hilariously, he sucked plasma out of people through weird little lamprey-looking things on his hands because vampires were too intense for kids but that Lovecraftian nightmare was just fine by the network censors.

So if no one asked for this movie, no one wants this movie and it’s probably going to end with Jared Leto getting hepatitis, why are we making it? Wait, the last one doesn’t sound like a bad idea, but I doubt Sony would spend $200 million on a film just to give Jared Leto hepatitis, they could just cast him in a Tommy Lee biopic. There are so many good Spider-Man characters you could make a movie about. How about Black Cat or Silver Sable? But I guess Sony knows what they’re doing; after all, they made Spider-Man 3 and The Amazing Spider-Man 2, who am I to second-guess that track record.