Morbius (2022): the Sony film starring Jared Leto, its Vulture scenes and the 'Morbin' Time' meme

Morbius at a glance: the film's fact file

Morbius is not a Marvel Studios film. It is a Sony film, distributed by Columbia Pictures, the third in the studio's Spider-Man universe after Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021). It adapts a character born in the pages of Spider-Man, covered in detail in our profile of Morbius in the comics. The films about the web-slinger himself, and the order to watch them in, are covered on our Spider-Man films page.

From the 1971 Living Vampire to the 2017 script

Morbius, the Living Vampire, was created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane in The Amazing Spider-Man #101, cover-dated October 1971. It was the first issue of the series not written by Stan Lee: Roy Thomas had taken over after #100, covered in our article on the six-armed Spider-Man. A few months earlier, a revision of the Comics Code, which came into force in February 1971, had lifted the ban on vampires, now permitted 'in the classic tradition'.

In the comics, Michael Morbius is a Greek biochemist and Nobel Prize winner. While trying to cure a rare blood disease with a treatment combining vampire bat DNA and electroshock, he becomes a pseudo-vampire. Before the 2022 film, the character had already come close to the big screen: he appears, played by director Stephen Norrington, in a deleted scene from Blade (1998), only viewable in the DVD extras. The web-slinger's full rogues' gallery can be found in our guide to his enemies.

The film was born in secret. On 13 November 2017, The Hollywood Reporter revealed that Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless, the screenwriting duo behind Power Rangers (2017), had delivered a Morbius script to Sony. They had previously written Dracula Untold, The Last Witch Hunter and Gods of Egypt.

Jared Leto, Matt Smith and the cast

Antoine Fuqua and F. Gary Gray were considered to direct before Sony chose Daniel Espinosa. In late June 2018, Variety confirmed Jared Leto in the title role and Espinosa behind the camera. The Swedish filmmaker had made the gangster film Easy Money, followed by Safe House, Child 44 and Life. Jared Leto, for his part, had already played a comic-book character, the Joker in Suicide Squad (2016), and won the 2014 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Dallas Buyers Club.

On 24 January 2019, Variety announced that Matt Smith, formerly the Doctor in Doctor Who, was in final negotiations for a major role. Before release, his character was presented as Loxias Crown, aka Hunger in the comics; in the film he is called Milo, and in March 2022 the actor said he still didn't know whether he was playing Loxias Crown. Jared Harris plays Emil, the doctor who has looked after Michael and Milo since childhood; in January 2020, the actor denied the rumour that he would be playing Doctor Octopus. Harris and Smith had already worked together on The Crown, where they played King George VI and Prince Philip. In September 2024, Harris told the British newspaper The i Paper that he made a Marvel film because he had a mortgage to pay off. The casts of the Spider-Man films are gathered on our page covering every cast.

A shoot in Manchester and a release pushed back to 2022

Filming began in the last week of February 2019 in London, under the working title 'Plasma', with Pinewood Studios as its base. In March 2019, the crew shot in Manchester's Northern Quarter, dressed up as New York with yellow cabs, traffic lights and New York buses. Reshoots took place in Los Angeles in February 2020. Daniel Espinosa confirmed to Uproxx in April 2022 that Jared Leto got around on crutches even off camera, so slowly that he ended up being taken to the toilet in a wheelchair so as not to hold up production.

As for the schedule, the release went through a long series of delays. In late January 2019, before filming had even started, Sony set the US release for 31 July 2020. On 30 March 2020, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, the film slipped to 19 March 2021. On 11 January 2021 it moved to 8 October 2021, then, on 22 January 2021, to 21 January 2022, when the James Bond film No Time to Die took the October date. In late April 2021, it was pushed back by a week. On 4 January 2022, Sony moved it to 1 April 2022 with no official reason given: BGR saw it as the effect of the Omicron wave, Deadline as a fear of getting in the way of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which had by then passed $1.3 billion. In late February 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine, Sony also suspended the release of its films in Russia, Morbius included.

On 10 March 2022, Jared Leto presented the film to the public at Plaza Carso in Mexico City. Morbius was released in France on 30 March 2022, distributed by Sony Pictures Releasing France, then in the United States on 1 April. You can rewatch the web-slinger's own films at home with our Spider-Man DVDs and Blu-rays, and our posters put their heroes up on your wall.

What the film is about

Michael Morbius is a doctor suffering from a rare blood disease. As a child, he met Milo, who has the same condition, at a Greek care facility that took in such patients. Now a researcher, Michael publicly turns down the Nobel Prize awarded for his work on artificial blood. To cure himself, he brings vampire bats back from Costa Rica, funded by Milo. He then injects himself with the serum derived from their genes aboard a cargo ship out at sea, surrounded by mercenaries.

The film then follows the clash between the two childhood friends. At the climax, Martine Bancroft dies after Milo's attack; Michael kills Milo with the help of the bats and flies off with them. Martine, meanwhile, comes back to life with vampiric powers, unbeknown to Michael. The symbiote, the other great dark figure of the web-slinger's universe, has its own Venom and symbiote figures; and, being a vampire, Morbius also fits right in at Halloween, the season for our masks and our costumes.

The two Vulture scenes, explained

The marketing had promised a strong link to Spider-Man. The first trailer, released on 13 January 2020, ended on Michael Keaton in a prison uniform, similar to the one he wore in Homecoming's mid-credits scene, and showed a poster of Spider-Man, in the suit from the Sam Raimi films, sprayed with the word 'murderer'. That shot is not in the film, and Spider-Man does not appear in it. Michael Keaton only shows up in the two scenes inserted into the credits.

In the first, the sky splits open as in Spider-Man: No Way Home: Adrian Toomes finds himself in a cell in Morbius's universe, then is released because there is no record of him ever having been detained. In the second, Toomes, in his Vulture suit, meets Morbius, puts his presence down to 'something to do with Spider-Man' and suggests they team up. Morbius replies with a single word: 'Intriguing'. TheWrap points out that, technically, neither scene is a post-credits scene: both take place during the credits.

Some critics saw them as the set-up for the Sinister Six, the villain team from the comics; Sony never confirmed it, and no film followed. In March 2024, on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Michael Keaton said he had no idea what his appearance meant, adding that even the filmmakers struggled to explain it to him. The character, who comes from the MCU, is covered in our profile of the Vulture, and his original film in our article on Homecoming.

Spider-Man Figure - The Vulture in Homecoming

The Vulture from Homecoming in mid-flight, dark and gold armour, large turbine-powered mechanical wings spread wide: the character who lands in Morbius's universe in the two credits scenes.

View the product — €329.90

Harsh reviews and collapsing ticket sales

In its opening US weekend, Morbius took the top spot at the box office with $39,005,895 from 4,268 cinemas, and grossed around $84 million worldwide. What followed was brutal: in its second weekend, the film dropped 74% to around $10.2 million, one of the steepest falls ever recorded for a comic-book film. It finished with $73,865,530 in North America and between $162.8 million and $167.5 million worldwide, depending on the source. In France, it sold 767,295 tickets.

The critics were not divided: they were damning. Over the US opening weekend, Morbius had a 17% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes; the site shows 15% from 288 reviews as of 16 October 2026. The site's consensus criticises the film for uninspired effects, mechanical performances and a story 'bordering on the absurd'. Metacritic gives it 35 out of 100, based on 55 reviews, and American audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it a C+.

'It's Morbin' Time': how a flop became a meme

In early April 2022, just after the release and the negative reviews, ironic memes grouped under the hashtag #MorbiusSweep flooded Twitter, hailing Morbius as a historic critical and commercial triumph. The wave's star line, 'It's Morbin' Time', is never spoken in the film. It riffs on the Power Rangers' 'It's Morphin' Time' and also echoes The Thing's 'It's clobberin' time' from the Fantastic Four comics.

Sony seemed to take the joke literally: on Friday 3 June 2022, the studio put Morbius back in more than 1,000 US cinemas, without explaining its decision. According to Forbes estimates, the film took only around $85,000 on the Friday and $280,000 over the weekend, roughly $270 per cinema. That same evening, Jared Leto posted a video, captioned 'What time is it?', in which he is caught reading the script for 'Morbius 2: It's Morbin' Time'. The script is credited to Bartholomew Cubbins, named after the hero of a Dr. Seuss book. The script was a joke: no sequel was ever made.

This online taste for parody is not unique to Morbius: Spider-Man himself has long been on the receiving end, from the meme where he points at himself, covered in our fun facts, to his viral success on TikTok. To show off your favourite memes, our stickers and our Spider-Man mugs have a sense of humour too.

Spider-Man Figure - Morbius

Morbius in his comic-book look: pallid face, red eyes and fangs, long black hair, a long black coat over a blue bodysuit. The Living Vampire of 1971, the one the 2022 film adapted.

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The Razzies and the end of the Sony universe

The verdict came at the 43rd Razzie Awards. Morbius received five nominations, announced in January 2023: Worst Picture, Worst Actor for Jared Leto, Worst Supporting Actress for Adria Arjona, Worst Director for Daniel Espinosa and Worst Screenplay for Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless. On 10 March 2023, it won two: Worst Actor for Leto and Worst Supporting Actress for Arjona. Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay went to Blonde. Leto had already received, on 26 March 2022, the Razzie for Worst Supporting Actor for House of Gucci.

The universe Morbius belongs to has itself changed name: first officially called 'Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters', a name confirmed to IGN in spring 2020, it became 'Sony's Spider-Man Universe' at CinemaCon in August 2021. Sazama and Sharpless went on to co-write, with Claire Parker and S.J. Clarkson, the screenplay for Madame Web, released on 14 February 2024 in the United States. On 10 December 2024, as Kraven the Hunter was being released, TheWrap reported that Sony was shutting down its spin-off universe, making Kraven the last film in the series. The Venom saga, which launched this universe in 2018, is told in Venom on the big screen, and the split of the web-slinger's rights in our article on Marvel, Disney and Sony.

Spider-Man Figure - Venom 30cm

Venom standing on his rocky base, red tongue out and white fangs bared, in front of his illustrated box: a 30 cm statue of the symbiote who launched the Sony universe that Morbius belongs to.

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Other villains who deserve their own film are reviewed in our article on the enemies who deserve a film, and Venom himself on our Venom and the symbiotes page.

Key takeaways