Jared Leto has a Marvel-ous taste for blood and broodiness in first ‘Morbius’ trailer
By While the current Joker is making headlines, the last one returns to show he’s still got some bite, too.
Jared Leto, the Oscar winner who played a gangster version of the Joker in “Suicide Squad,” tackles another comic-book role with the horror-tinged “Morbius” (in theaters July 31). The first trailer dropped Monday, showing Leto in all his newly vampiric glory, and tossing in a couple Easter eggs for Marvel movie fans.
Directed by Daniel Espinosa, “Morbius” like the 2008 hit “Venom” takes place in Sony’s Spider-Man-centric world and introduces Dr. Michael Morbius (Leto), a Nobel Prize-winning scientist dying of a rare blood disorder. The new footage shows how the good doctor goes to extreme lengths and places for a cure, and Morbius is turned into a super-strong, super-speedy ripped vampire with an overwhelming urge to drink blood.
The “Morbius” cast includes Jared Harris, Adria Arjona, Matt Smith and Tyrese Gibson, though the most intriguing guy is the cameo at the end of the trailer.
“Michael Morbius. Got tired of doing the whole good-guy thing, huh? What’s up, doc?” asks a smiling Michael Keaton to a hoodie-clad Leto. We don’t know yet who Keaton is playing, but he has the New York accent and attitude of Adrian Toomes, aka the Vulture, the villain of “Spider-Man: Homecoming.”
Time will tell if “Morbius” is connected to the Avengers-centric Marvel Cinematic Universe, or if Tom Holland’s Spidey will soon be the star of his own galaxy after last year’s Sony/Disney dust-up, but there’s definite connective thread between Keaton’s appearance and Leto walking by graffiti of Spider-Man tagged “Murderer,” a reference to the ending of “Spider-Man: Far From Home.”