Jared Leto may currently be on an American tour with his rock band Thirty Seconds To Mars, who released new album America in April, but he’ll soon be back in Hollywood filming some exciting new projects, including the just-announced Spider-Man spinoff Morbius.
Directed by Daniel Espinosa (Life, Child 44, and Safe House), the Sony Pictures flick will focus on the Marvel Comics antihero Morbius the Living Vampire, who will be portrayed by Leto, reported Deadline.
Dr. Michael Morbius is a biochemist who is trying to create a cure for a rare, fatal blood disease he suffers from. However, after injecting himself with a serum derived from bat DNA, he becomes afflicted with a form of vampirism, which gives him hideous features including fangs and chalk-white skin, superhuman strength, an aversion to sunlight, and a thirst for human blood.
A May post from That Hashtag Show gives some possible insight into the film’s plot. “Though disgusted by his own bloodlust, [Morbius] chooses to prey upon criminals he deems unworthy of life,” the site reported.
There’s no official word yet on which other Marvel characters will appear in the film or which actors will co-star in the movie.
Morbius made his Marvel Comics debut in 1971’s The Amazing Spider-Man No. 101 as one of Spider-Man’s enemies. This was the first issue not written by Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee, noted the Hollywood Reporter. Soon after, Morbius had his own comic book series.
With the addition of Morbius, Sony now has four flicks lined up that are based in the Spider-Man Universe. The sequel to 2017’s Spider-Man: The Homecoming, titled Spider-Man: Far from Home, with Tom Holland as Spidey, is scheduled to start shooting next month for a July 2019 release. Tom Hardy’s Venom is slated to hit theaters on Oct. 5, and Silver and Black, focusing on the characters Black Cat and Silver Sable, is in the works.
Morbius, of course, is not the first comic book character on Leto’s vast resume. In 2016, he notoriously played the Joker in DC Comics’ Suicide Squad. He will reprise the role in a sequel to the original movie and will reportedly headline a standalone film focused on his character.
In addition to the comic-book-inspired flicks, the 46-year-old is reportedly attached to the third film in the Tron franchise, playing a character named Ares. No word yet as to when that movie will start filming.
The eccentric actor first achieved stardom in the early ’90s thanks to his breakout role playing Jordan Catalano on the 1994 ABC series My So-Called Life. He received both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award in 2013 for his portrayal of a transgender woman with HIV in Dallas Buyers Club. Leto was last seen in the Netflix crime thriller The Outsider, which came out this past March.