How ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ Visuals Influenced ‘Morbius,’ According to Director
Morbius, Spider-Man villain and living vampire, soon debuts as Sony’s first brutal hero after Venom (Tom Hardy). After Sony pushed the Jared Leto Morbius release date again after Spider-Man: No Way Home hit theaters starring Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield, and Tobey Maguire, fans suspected a connection. Could Morbius, Andrew Garfield, and The Amazing Spider-Man movies connect? Did the Morbius cast and crew add new details? Director Daniel Espinosa opened up about how Spider-Man: No Way Home influenced Morbius.
Did the ‘Morbius’ cast and crew add more to the movie after ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’?
While the cast and crew worked on the pieces and parts, the April 1 date closed in for Morbius’ full movie to release. And fans still had painfully little information about the movie, its MCU relation or even Matt Smith’s villain role. Details like Michael Keaton seemingly returning as Adrian Toomes, aka The Vulture, only maddened things.
ComicBook.com asked Morbius director Espinosa how or if Spider-Man: No Way Home changed Morbius.
“Yes and no,” Espinosa said when asked if the crew went back to work following the success of Spider-Man: No Way Home.
He emphasized that they took inspiration from the way Marvel handled the multiverse. With Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness dealing with dozens of other worlds, Sony took a page from their book to help audiences.
However, he noted that the MCU did not crack open the universal floodgates first.
‘Morbius’ director cited both ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ and ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ for their working with parallel universes
The friendly neighborhood Spider-Man usually keeps his feet on the ground. However, Marvel Comics released the wildly popular Spider-Verse storyline in 2014. It earned an animated Spider-Man film with Miles Morales as the focus.
“The idea of the kind of parallel universes was really introduced, not into the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but introduced within cinema … in Spider-Verse, which was released by Sony and produced by Avi Arad, who also produced Morbius,” Espinosa said.
While Spider-Man: No Way Home influenced Morbius in how they handled things like parallel universes, it started much earlier, according to the director.
“So the concept of starting to work with parallel verses was something that existed prior to the Spider-Man movie. And it’s also been something that has existed for years in comic books,” he said. “You know, us who read comic books, we knew about it for like 15 or 20 years, as soon as the clone era died with Spider-Man, the verses took hold.”
From the sounds of it, Morbius could deal with alternate universes just like Venom and Spider-Man: No Way Home, to a lesser extent.
How else could the Marvel Cinematic Universe movie affect the Jared Leto film?
The director said Spider-Man: No Way Home visuals affected him and the Morbius crew.
When it came to introducing audiences to the parallel worlds of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, Marvel handled things perfectly.
“When Spider-Man came [out], there were certain visual elements of how those kind of transitions looked like that were informative,” he said.
Fans can watch Morbius in theaters on April 1, 2022.
