The Bad News Just Keeps Coming For Morbius

Jared Leto's living vampire is gonna have to wait a bit longer to live on the big screen.

With 2020 finally in our wake, it seems 2021 is already providing a hearty "same" when it comes to release dates. As the world continues to reel in the time of the never-ending pandemic, the effects of lockdowns and social distancing continue to be felt in the entertainment realm. Primarily, the ongoing theater closures and half-capacity measures in place continue to wreak havoc on major Hollywood studios who've been forced to shift premiere dates for virtually every film on their release schedules.

With vaccines now making the rounds (though in painfully slow fashion), there was legitimate hope that a modicum of normalcy might return in the early days of 2021. For movie fans, that meant finally getting to see some of those would-be tentpole properties pulled from the 2020 docket. That normalcy has yet to return. While some studios are getting exceedingly creative with their release plans, others are doubling-down hard on the theatrical experience. With most theater chains struggling to remain operational, those studios are now playing another round of release date shuffle.

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your perspective) for fans of superhero cinema, Sony Pictures is among the studios bent on giving their films the full theatrical experience. As reported by Variety, the studio has just pushed the release dates for several of its high-profile 2021 releases, and Jared Leto's long-awaited Spider-Man adjacent Marvel flick, Morbius, is indeed among them.

For those who've been awaiting the arrival of Morbius with the fevered bloodlust of the man-vamp himself, the wait just got a lot longer as the film's release has been pushed all the way to January 21, 2022.

That news will surely be a tough pill to swallow for fans of the iconic Spider-Man villain (and sometimes antihero) as the film's release has already been pushed by almost a year. Morbius was originally slated to hit theaters in July of 2020 as one of the summer's more eagerly anticipated offerings. The initial move to delay the film was more than understandable, however, as lockdowns and theater closures essentially ended the 2020 summer movie season before it even began.

Morbius' release was first bumped to October of 2020. That release date obviously didn't hold, with Sony bosses then locking the film in for a March 2021 premiere. With uncertainty continuing to dominate the coronavirus conversation, and Sony again re-shuffling release dates, it seems they're happy enough to wait as long as needed to ensure maximum return on one of their hottest Marvel titles.

For those unfamiliar with Morbius, the film follows in the footsteps of 2018's Venom as a standalone tale based on a popular Spider-Man foe who sometimes plays the part of antihero. Jared Leto is stepping into the title role for the adaptation, portraying a genius-level biochemist who, in attempting to cure himself of a rare and deadly blood disease, turns himself into something far more sinister — a super-powered being with an insatiable taste for human blood. Known for its gritty style and gory imagery, Morbius has become one of the more beloved Spider-Man-adjacent characters, so fans are understandably eager to see what Leto and company have in store for the film.  

Barring further unforeseen obstacles, the currently unrated but presumably hyper-violent flick will almost certainly make that 2022 release date. And after already being one of the most-anticipated movies of both 2020 and 2021, Morbius is now officially one of the most anticipated of 2022. Third time's a charm?