2018’s Venom didn’t just mark the title Spider-Man villain’s return to the big screen 11 years after his first cinematic appearance in Spider-Man 3 was deemed by many to be underwhelming. The movie also served as the first installment of the Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters, which will continue this fall with Venom: Let There Be Carnage, followed by the Jared Leto-led Morbius in early 2022. Naturally Tom Hardy will be back for the former project, but now it seems like we might see him in the latter as well.
Morbius director Daniel Espinosa recently spoke with Swedish outlet MovieZine about his career, including the upcoming Morbius, which he was hired to helm in summer 2018. When asked how he is as a director when directing “big stars” compared to how he was as a director a few years ago, Espinosa responded with the following (translated from Swedish):
It usually feels strange before the day begins, when you look at the schedule and stand on the set yourself. When you walk around there, the recording looks just like a Swedish production, but then when you look at the schedule and read names like Michael Keaton, Jared Leto, Tom Hardy, then it feels cool and very exciting. But once you start working, it's exactly the same thing. An actor wants a director and actors want to be directed.
Before going further, it’s worth noting that Daniel Espinosa worked with Tom Hardy on 2015’s Child 44, a Cold War-set mystery thriller that also starred Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace and Joel Kinnaman. So Espinosa simply could have been referring to his experience with Hardy on that movie, but the fact that he grouped the actor with Jared Leto and Michael Keaton is interesting. The first Morbius trailer revealed that Keaton will pop up alongside in the movie, although it still hasn’t been officially confirmed if he’s reprising Adrian Toomes from Spider-Man: Homecoming.
In any case, if Tom Hardy is indeed showing up in Morbius, that would clue people in who aren’t familiar with the SPUMC that Venom and the new Jared Leto movie are set in the same continuity. I suspect Hardy would cameo as Eddie Brock in Morbius once the main story was complete, akin to how Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury surfaced in some of the early Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, as opposed to being a supporting character. After all, since this will chronicle Michael Morbius’ origin story, you don’t want to have Venom stealing the limelight from him.
Like his comic book counterpart, Jared Leto’s Michael Morbius is a scientist suffering from a rare blood disease who finally succeeds in curing his condition, only to be afflicted with a type of vampirism. Leto’s cast-mates on the feature include Matt Smith as Loxias Crown, Adria Arjona as Martine Bancroft, Al Madrigal as Alberto Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson as Simon Stroud and Jared Harris as Morbius’ yet-to-be-identified mentor. Gods of Egypt duo Matt Sazama and Burk Shapless wrote the script.
Morbius is currently slated to hit theaters on January 28, 2022, but before that, you can watch Tom Hardy’s Eddie Brock clash with Woody Harrelson’s Cletus Kasady when Venom: Let There Be Carnage arrives on September 24. The SPUMC will also expand in early 2023 with Kraven the Hunter, which will star former Quicksilver Aaron Taylor-Johnson as the eponymous character.
