Vampires live forever, and that seems to be the length of time we’re going to have to wait to see Morbius. Sony has announced that the film, which was its first foray after Venom into expanding the Spider-Man villains cinematic universe, has been pushed back to Oct. 8, 2021. The movie was most recently scheduled to hit on March 19, but with theaters still shut down in the U.S., Wonder Woman 1984‘s box office tanking faster than anyone thought it would, and global markets still shaky, the studio seems to have decided to wait even longer.
Morbius stars Jared Leto as the titular character who is a sometimes-evil vampire that fights Spider-Man. Of course, with Spider-Man swinging his way through the MCU, he probably won’t show up in this movie. However, trailers for the film did reveal that Michael Keaton is in the film and will likely be reprising his role of the Vulture from Spider-Man: Homecoming. Sony has been trying to get its Spidey universe off the ground with a series of films including Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Kraven the Hunter, and more, but the pandemic has thrown a serious wrench into its plans. Momentum from the so-bad-its-good Venom is almost completely gone, and Morbius was never that big a draw in the first place.
There is also the question of how this will impact Sony’s other Spider-Man films or possibly even Spider-Man 3. That film is most likely going to feature a multiverse and may be the bridge Sony is using to bring Tom Holland’s Spider-Man into its cinematic universe and out of Marvel’s (barring the two companies continuing to play nice with each other). With films getting shoved further back, it may cause a domino of delays like we started seeing when the virus began hitting last year.
The first quarter of 2021 is starting to look truly bleak as the only studio releasing films theatrically is WB, which is pushing ahead with its plans to release its films both on HBO Max and theatrically throughout the year. Sony still has Cinderella on the schedule in early February, but that will probably move. Disney also seems to be holding out hope that The Kingsman will be able to release in March.
