With Sony finally living it up again via the success of Venom and Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse, not to mention enjoying a deal that’s paid off handsomely with Tom Holland’s entry into the Disney/Marvel MCU as its personal money web-spinner, the studio is ploughing ahead with several projects, including Morbius, their dark Spider-Man spin-off movie.

We’ll be gathering together everything you need to know about the film before it’s released, including cast announcements, plot details and trailers, so check back here for more, as it happens.

Morbius cast

Jared Leto will be playing the lead role of Morbius, which was surprising news to those who had expected him to reprise his role as The Joker in a solo spin-off movie over at Warner Bros. After his not-very-well-received turn in Suicide Squad, there was still talk of him rolling onto a Joker standalone flick, but this quickly died down, and in June, 2018 Sony revealed that it had signed up the Oscar-winning star of Dallas Buyers Club and Blade Runner 2049 to star as Morbius.

Former Doctor Matt Smith also has a major role in Morbius, according to Variety. Details are under a veil of secrecy at the moment, but we’ll keep you posted. Smith has recently fielded roles in Charlie Says and Patient Zero, and had a brief role in Terminator Genisys back in 2015. We’ll also be seeing him in Star Wars: Episode IX at the end of 2019, again in a role that’s being kept hush-hush for now.

There are currently rumours doing the rounds that Tom Hardy will make an appearance in Morbius as Venom, but this hasn’t yet been confirmed. It’s a lot more likely that Tom Holland showing up as Spider-Man, however.

Morbius crew

Daniel Espinosa (Safe House) is the director on this one, and he’s working off a script by Netflix’s Lost In Space co-creators, Matt Sazama and Burk Sharpless.

Morbius story

We’re not entirely sure where Sony will take Morbius. The character has featured in the Marvel comics as anything from a straight-up villain to a sort of empathetic villain, and in the 90s he was even depicted a hero of sorts. Samaza and Sharpless will be tasked with fleshing the character out properly, though, and we’d be surprised if they didn’t make Morbius at least somewhat likeable. After all, we heard a lot of chatter from the cast and crew before the release of 2018’s Venom about it being a hardcore violent adult version of the symbiote’s origin story, but a few months before its release the studio was suddenly presenting a PG-13 cut, more’s the pity.

The character of Dr. Michael Morbius first appeared Marvel’s The Amazing Spider-Man #101 in October of 1971, the first issue in the series that Stan Lee didn’t write, and in a period just after the Comics Code Authority finally took the gloves off creators wanting to add vampires and other supernatural creatures to their work.

Dr. Morbius began his story as an incredible biochemist with a rare blood disorder. He set out to cure himself, experimenting with vampire bats. This soon went wrong, and the doctor became a pale, bloodthirsty creature who for all intents and purposes is a vampire, without actually being dead. Hence, the character being referred to as a ‘Living Vampire.’

If you want to know more about Morbius and his backstory, we’ve gone into it in detail right over here.

Morbius release date

Morbius will be released on 31st July, 2020, making it one of Sony’s big summer gambles.

A good monster never really stays dead. They just sit in their grave, lying in wait for the next resurrection. So it is that barely a year after Universal Pictures’ Dark Universe met a grim and ignominious end with The Mummy, the Universal Monsters are back, and at least at the launch appear to be coming from the production company that seemingly can do no wrong: Blumhouse Productions.

The news comes via Variety, which reports Universal and Blumhouse have tapped Leigh Whannell to write and direct a new version of The Invisible Man. Whannell, who wrote and directed one of Blumhouse’s more overlooked and hidden gems from 2018, Upgrade, is a pick that also signals that Universal is serious about turning the page from the (rather misguided) idea of making their legacy monsters into action movie icons reminiscent of the superhero stable over at Marvel Studios. Instead Whannell, whose other credentials includes co-writing and starring in the original Saw and writing most of the Insidious movies (as well as directing the third one), is a sign that the emphasis will be about reintroducing these characters to their horror roots.

“Throughout cinematic history, Universal’s classic monsters have been reinvented through the prism of each new filmmaker who brought these characters to life,” said Peter Cramer, Universal’s president of production. “We are excited to take a more individualised approach for their return to screen, shepherded by creators who have stories they are passionate to tell with them.”

In this vein, Universal has revealed to the trade that “budget, tone, and rating” will not determine how each film is made, but rather every film will spring from each creative team’s own sensibility. For this reason, the focus will be on legacy characters as opposed to creating an interconnected shared universe. They also suggest that The Invisible Man will not necessarily be the first one to get in front of cameras.

It seems prudent to focus on individual characters for the time being. While it is not hard to imagine a scenario where these characters crossover again—producer Jason Blum just saw massive success doing that with M. Night Shyamalan on Glass—the focus should be on reinventing them as appealing horror icons in the 21st century. As we’ve previously studied, Universal Monsters were the original cinematic shared universe, but one that was built on high-quality films defined by their own evocative visions from filmmakers like James Whale and actors like Bela Lugosi, Boris Karloff, and Claude Rains.

Indeed, Rains made his American cinema debut in the original The Invisible Man directed by Whale circa 1933. The picture was Whale’s third Universal horror movie after Frankenstein and The Old Dark House, and it liberally adapted H.G. Wells’ story of a mad scientist who saw his countenance vanish into thin air. The picture also starred Gloria Stuart and has never been fully remade by Universal, although there have been other adaptations and reimaginings of Wells’ concept. Universal was all set to include the Invisible Man in their “Dark Universe” and had gone so far as to cast Johnny Depp in the title role. We suspect Whannell and Blumhouse will go a different way.

While it’s unclear if Blumhouse will be involved in the production of all the new Universal Monsters’ latest revival, from the outside it would seem like a smart bet. Blum’s company has been responsible for many of the popular horror movies of the last decade, relying on a formula that lets creative directors have nearly full autonomy for a “micro-budget.” (Many of Blumhouse’s original IP films have a budget of $3 to $5 million. Sequels see that rise with Glass just capping a new ceiling at $20 million.) Having helped nurture a more commercial but a still inventive side of the current horror renaissance, Blumhouse’s previous hits include Insidious, Sinister, Split, The Visit, Paranormal Activity, Happy Death Day, and Get Out. That final film, written and directed by first-timer Jordan Peele, turned into a cultural phenomenon culminating with an Oscar nomination for Best Picture and an Oscar win for Peele in the Best Original Screenplay category. (Blum has also produced Oscar winners and contenders like Damien Chazelle’s Whiplash and Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman).

Given Blumhouse’s precision at picking good talent for horror projects, as well as being able to reinvent horror icons to modern success (see last year’s Halloween revival), we have a hunch this take on the Universal Monsters will outlast the Dark Universe.

Metro Exodus will be exclusively released via the Epic Store on PC. The standard edition and the gold edition of the game are available for pre-purchase on the Epic Games website now.

“Sales of Metro Exodus have been discontinued on Steam due to a publisher decision to make the game exclusive to another PC store,” reads a post on Exodus‘ Steam page. “The developer and publisher have assured us that all prior sales of the game on Steam will be fulfilled on Steam, and Steam owners will be able to access the game and any future updates or DLC through Steam. We think the decision to remove the game is unfair to Steam customers, especially after a long pre-sale period. We apologize to Steam customers that were expecting it to be available for sale through the February 15th release date, but we were only recently informed of the decision and given limited time to let everyone know.”

There’s quite a bit to unpack here. First off, this news follows the recent announcement that Ubisoft will launch The Division 2 exclusively on Epic Game Store and are reportedly intending to release future Ubisoft games exclusively via that platform. Now, it seems they might have been just the first of several publishers who intend to skip Steam at launch. 

What’s especially interesting in this instance, though, is that Valve has somewhat aggressively called out this late decision via their platform whereas they made little direct reference to the Ubisoft decision on Steam. That might have something to do with publisher Deep Silver stating that their decision to make this move at such a late date can be traced to Epic’s more generous revenue sharing model. Not only will the publisher and developer receive a larger portion of Metro‘s sales via Epic than they would if they released the game through Steam, but the difference is so great that they’ve even lowered the price of the game ($50 USD on Epic while the Steam version cost $59.99). 

While other studios have referenced Epic’s more generous revenue sharing structure when explaining their decision to skip Steam, Deep Silver going so far as to lower the price of the game (at least in the U.S.) really shows just how big that difference is. While Deep Silver states that this exclusive agreement will only last for about one year, we wonder how much longer Valve can hold out even as some of their own games falter. 

As for Metro Exodus, we recently had the chance to play the upcoming sequel and walked away rather impressed with what it brings to the franchise while retaining the core elements that make the Metro series so great in the first place. 

As we inch closer to that February 15th release date, we’ll be sure to keep you furnished with updates.

Just in case you needed more evidence that James McAvoy is one of the most charming actors in Hollywood, the actor recently made his pitch to MTV News about why he should play the young version of Jean-Luc Picard in the upcoming Star Trek series that will see Patrick Stewart reprise the iconic role.

“I will take you where no Star Trek fan has gone before,” McAvoy joked. “I will reveal things about Jean-Luc Picard that nobody even wanted to see. I will rip this Captain to shreds.”

McAvoy plays the younger version of Stewart’s Charles Xavier character in the X-Men franchise, so he is pretty qualified for the role. In the interview, he also displays a pretty impressive depth of Star Trek: The Next Generation knowledge, offering his takes on some of Picard’s most quotable catchphrases, including: “make it so,” “engage,” and “tea, earl grey, hot.”

What are the odds of McAvoy actually appearing in the new Star Trek series, which will join the current Star Trek docket of Star Trek: Discovery, as well as a planned Michelle Yeoh spin-off and at least two animated series already in the works?

“No, I’m not expecting to get a call to play the young Jean-Luc, unfortunately,” McAvoy said. “But I will be tuning in and I can’t wait to see what he does because he’s a brilliant actor and he’s amazing in that role and it’s just nice that Star Trek are looking forward to more than just spaceship and a crew, do you know what I mean? They’re doing something different, and that’s awesome.”

You can check out the actual interview here, which you obviously should because McAvoy does multiple impressions and is just generally delightful…