Today, in “Do you want a Morbius 2? Because that’s how you get a Morbius 2" news: For the love of god, no, Sony has not already green-lit a Morbius 2.
We feel, honestly, like we shouldn’t even have to say that! The vaguely Spider-Man adjacent Sony film was a) a critical flop, and b), in superhero movie terms, made no money. ($163 million, planetwide, which would be considered a pretty soft opening weekend for a big Marvel film.) But then, this is life on the internet, where no movie about a living vampire played by Jared Leto can be so delayed, or so aggressively mediocre, that people won’t adopt it as a new flag to wave in support of Irony Culture. Morbius is Shrek now. That’s the world in which we live.
(And, yes, we acknowledge that there are, probably, somewhere, people on this planet who genuinely enjoyed Morbius, who were excited at its hinting at a wider cinematic universe focused on all the Spider-Man characters Sony has the rights to who are not Spider-Man, and who are eagerly awaiting Morbius 2: Mo’ Rbius, Mo’ Problems. There’s nothing surprising about this; perverts have existed in human society since the dawn of time.)
The outpouring of “support” for a second outing by Michael Morbius, Terrible Doctor, reached a new inflection point this week, as people online began circulating a fake image of a CNN page, claiming, absurdly, that a sequel has been greenlit for “Paramount+ and Disney+ streaming services.” Said post appears to have genuinely convinced some people the movie’s being made. (Or they’re pretending to be convinced; Morbius 2 conversation gets very postmodern very fast.) Meanwhile, the aggressively non-word “Morbin’” has periodically trended on social media in recent weeks—because people keep claiming that Morbius 2 will feature our man Mike declaring “It’s Morbin’ time.” (He will not. He must not.)
And, look: Does us writing this article, talking about this “movement,” probably just increase the counter on whatever spreadsheet Sony is running to keep track of when our society’s faux Morbius 2 obsession reaches formally profitable levels? Probably! Morbius 2 is a problem with many root causes. But at least we can reassure you that it doesn’t exist yet. We still have time to turn away from the self-destructive course we’re on.