Sony Pictures is moving forward with a Morbius the Living Vampire movie as part of their Spider-Man spinoff universe. Sony has tried their hand at a standalone Spider-Man franchise twice over the last two decades – first with Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man trilogy, then again with Marc Webb and Andrew Garfield’s The Amazing Spider-Man. However, when The Amazing Spider-Man 2 didn’t meet expectations, Sony struck a deal with Marvel to bring Peter Parker into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Tom Holland debuted as the latest wall-crawling superhero in Captain America: Civil War, and found success in his own film this summer with Jon Watts’ Spider-Man: Homecoming.


While the character of Peter Parker is now shared between Sony and Marvel, Sony still owns the rights to Spider-Man and the superhero’s stable of related characters. As such, the studio has begun building its own Spider-Man spinoff universe that so far includes Ruben Fleischer’s Venom, starring Tom Hardy, and Gina Prince-Bythewood’s Silver and Black, which has yet to be cast but will focus on Silver Sable and Black Cat. Now, another Spider-Man spinoff is in the works to join the fledgling superhero franchise.


As reported by THR, Power Rangers scribes Burk Sharpless and Matt Sazama wrote a script for a movie based on Morbius the Living Vampire that was secretly in development at Sony. As of yet, there’s no director or star on board the Morbius movie, but we know it won’t be connected to Tom Holland’s iteration of Spider-Man.


Created by writer Roy Thomas and artist Gil Kane, Morbius first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #101 in 1971 – the first issue not written by Peter Parker co-creator Stan Lee. According to Marvel Comics lore, Michael Morbius was a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist who accidentally turned himself into a pseudo-vampire during an experimental treatment in which he was trying to cure a blood disease using electroshock therapy and vampire bats. The anti-hero has many of the same characteristics of a vampire, such as aversion to sunlight and the need to drink blood to survive, but isn’t affected by typical vampire weaknesses, like religious artifacts.


Sharpless and Sazama, for their part, have some experience in vampire mythology, having penned the script for what was meant to be the kickstarter for Universal’s Dark Universe, Dracula Untold – though the movie underperformed and was then ignored by the studio’s latest vision for the classic monster universe. Their additional writing credits include Gods of Egypt and The Last Witch Hunter, as well as the upcoming Netflix reboot of Lost in Space.


Details about Sharpless and Sazama’s Morbius movie script are unknown at this time, and whether or not the film will tell the character’s origin story is also unclear. Additionally, without a release date or any word on production, it remains to be seen what kind of timetable Sony is looking at for this film. As of now, Venom has an October 2018 release date, with Silver and Black set to hit in February 2019, so it’s likely the Morbius movie won’t debut before mid-to-late 2019. As such, we may learn more about Sony’s Morbius the Living Vampire film in the coming months, that is, if the studio decides to continue moving forward on it.