Sony's Kraven the Hunter following behind them.
In Morbius, Jared Leto portrays geneticist Michael Morbius, afflicted with a rare blood disease that he's determined to find a cure for. With vampire bats as part of the equation, Morbius finds himself not only cured of his disease, but possessing the superhuman abilities of a vampire. Despite the potential of Morbius as a comic book movie with horror elements, the COVID-19 pandemic has interfered greatly.
Originally scheduled to be released on July 10, 2020, Morbius has had its release date pushed back seven times as a result of the ongoing pandemic. While Morbius is dropping numerous trailers and marketing and seems set to arrive on its slated April 1 date, the vampire-centric movie had at one point been scheduled for October 8, 2021. Considering what kind of character Morbius is, October would be the ideal time frame for his big-screen debut.
To be fair, with Venom: Let There Be Carnage arriving on October 1, 2021, Sony releasing two Marvel-based movies that close together obviously wouldn't have been wise. That said, the last few years have seen Sony carve out October as a very strong release window for the Venom movies. With both essentially being horror-comedies, the two Venom movies debuted to great success in their respective years.
Morbius, being centered on a character with the moniker of "The Living Vampire" and having connections to Blade, would have found equal serendipity with an October release date. Indeed, Morbius would arguably have benefited more than any of Sony's Marvel films by capitalizing on the Halloween season. Unfortunately, the way the chips have fallen for Morbius, through not fault of its own, make a move to October 2022 very unadvisable.
Having been delayed seven times, Morbius has drawn comparisons with the similarly postponed The New Mutants. Originally meant to arrive in April 2018, The New Mutants was pushed back repeatedly until finally releasing in August 2020, right as theaters were cautiously opening their doors again amid the pandemic. Too many delays runs the risk of taking a movie out of the public consciousness for too long and impacting its commercial prospects. Morbius can't afford that risk after seven delays.
Thankfully, it seems that Morbius' bad luck is finally coming to an end. With elements like the reference Morbius makes to Venom in and the Spider-Man mural seen in the trailers, it'll be interesting for audiences to see how Morbius links up with other Sony and MCU Marvel films. While releasing Morbius with the aura of the Halloween season as a marketing tool would've been perfect for the film, it unfortunately wasn't meant to be.
