The Morbius trailer premiered today, giving us the first good look at the second picture in Sony’s Marvel Universe. Morbius stars Jared Leto as the titular character and will serve as Morbius the Living Vampire’s origin story. The trailer gave us a lot to digest, and though Spider-Man isn’t slated to make an official appearance in the film, an easter egg does feature Spider-Man PS4 from Insomniac Games.
At the 2:10 mark in the Morbius trailer, you can see graffiti of Spider-Man painted on the wall to the right of Jared Leto. However, this artwork wasn’t explicitly made for this footage. Instead, it seems like this art was taken from one of the PR shots for Spider-Man PS4. As you can see, the two Spideys are identical, with the graffiti just being the Spider-Man PS4 art flipped horizontally.
Whether or not this reuse of existing assets is intended to be a nod to Insomniac Games or not isn’t known. It’s entirely possible that this is just one of many stock images available to artists at Sony, and it was chosen at random. Regardless, it’s cool to see art from the video game in the trailer, and maybe it hints at something special for Insomniac’s Spider-Man 2.
I personally have no clue who Morbius is, so I’m excited to see the film and get a proper introduction to the character. I did like Venom, and I think Sony has the right idea with developing its version of the Marvel Universe around lesser-known and traditionally villainous roles. The Spider-Man movie franchise has been a bit of a mess since Sam Raimi’s series ended, and Sony has repeatedly had issues with coordinating a bridge between the MCU and SCU with Disney. With films like Morbius, Sony can do its own thing with its little slice of the Marvel universe without worrying about making it consistent with what Disney has going on.
Morbius will premiere in theaters on July 31, 2020.
