The dead speak! Weeks after all but leaving first-run theatres, Jared Leto’s Spider-Man spinoff Morbius is somehow, some way, returning to the big screen. ERC Box Office on Twitter first broke the news that on June 3, the film will be on over 1,000 screens across the U.S. Plus, a quick yet embarrassing Google search for “Morbius showtimes” for this weekend confirms several theatres in Los Angeles are indeed playing the film for at least one showtime per day. Dr. Michael Morbius (at your service) is back.
The question is… why? Gizmodo reached out to Sony Pictures for comment but ComicBook surmises it’s because since its release on digital platforms, Morbius has gained a cult following of fans who have been passionately getting behind the movie and making it trend on Twitter. That’s not something I’ve seen happen myself but the fact that this theatrical re-release is a real thing makes it seem like Sony noticed.
We reviewed Morbius when it hit theatres earlier this year and mostly hated it. It felt like a film that just never quite knew what story it wanted to tell and ended up not being about much at all. Nevertheless, the excitement over a film we were told had ties to Spider-Man (which it sort of does, tangentially) shot Morbius off at the box office with a very solid, near-$US40 million opening weekend. In the weeks since though, that progressively got worse and at the moment, it has made just over $US73 million in the U.S. and about $US90 ($125) million everywhere else. That’s not a full-fledged bomb, but it’s certainly not what Sony had in mind when it cast Oscar winner Leto in the lead role.
With Top Gun: Maverick currently soaring at the box office, and Jurassic World Dominion ready to mow down the competition next week, it’s unlikely Morbius makes any significant headway this weekend. Even though I didn’t like the movie all that much, it is kind of cool that fans who didn’t see it in theatres now have a chance to.