Jared Leto has signed on to play Morbius The Living Vampire - a major villain who first appeared in Spider-Man comics in the early '70s - in an upcoming movie.
THR reports that Daniel Espinosa, who directed last's year so-so sci-fi horror 'Life' and the forgettable thriller 'Safe House' with Ryan Reynolds and Denzel Washington, is being set to bring the anti-hero to life. Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama, who were the creators of Netflix's hugely popular reboot of 'Lost In Space', have been set to pen a screenplay.
This marks the second comic-book character Jared Leto has on his plate, the other being of course Joker in 'Suicide Squad' and Warners' ill-fated DC Expanded Universe. Sony, meanwhile, is looking to expand its own Spider-Verse with this and already has Tom Hardy as fellow Spider-Man villain Venom in the movie of the same name set for release on October 5th.
While no statement was given with the release of Leto's casting, it seems pretty likely that this is something of a rebuke to Warners after news broke that a separate Joker standalone movie without Leto was being developed with Todd Phillips directing and Martin Scorsese producing. The fate of that particular movie still remains a mystery, but given the lukewarm critical reception for the DCEU - bar 'Wonder Woman' - everything looks like it's up in the air.
'Morbius The Living Vampire' has no release date currently set.
