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Morbius Release Date Delayed 3 Months To April 2022
Sony delays the Morbius release date by three months with Jared Leto's Marvel movie now hitting theaters in April 2022. Following the success of Venom in 2018, Sony moved forward with plans to make its own cinematic universe using Spider-Man villains. This practice led them to move forward with a Morbius solo film. It stars Leto as Dr. Michael Morbius, who becomes the Living Vampire during his quests to cure his rare disease. Morbius is directed by Daniel Espinosa and also features Michael Keaton's Vulture, raising questions about its connection to the Marvel Cinematic Universe or other Spider-Man franchises.
It has been a long road for interested parties to see Morbius. The film originally was scheduled to hit theaters in July 2020, but that was before COVID-19 arrived and wreaked havoc across Hollywood's calendar. It moved back to March 2021 at first with the hopes that the pandemic would be over by then. Morbius then was delayed another seven months to October 2021 when conditions didn't improve, and again to January 2022 when Venom: Let There Be Carnage needed a later release date.
With Morbius slated to come out later this month on January 28, 2022, Sony has now officially announced it has delayed the movie once more. Morbius' new release date is April 1, 2022. This marks the seventh overall release date change for the movie, as Sony shifted the release by a week or two a couple of times on top of the more significant delays. The move comes as Spider-Man: No Way Home is dominating the box office but also as positive COVID tests are surging as a result of the omicron variant.
Even with this new Morbius release date delay, Sony's superhero movie should still be well-positioned to have a strong opening. The first weekend of April doesn't have any other major movies releasing that will directly compete with Leto's Marvel film. Morbius' biggest competition will come during its second and third weeks in theaters, as that is when Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore are scheduled to release. Both of those tentpoles will attract similar demographics as Morbius, which could put more pressure on the movie to have a strong opening weekend.
It shouldn't come as too much of a surprise that Sony elected to delay Morbius' release date to April 2022 either. Spider-Man: No Way Home is dominating the box office currently, and it could continue to crush every other movie playing in theaters for weeks to come. Moving Morbius ensures Sony's two titles won't compete against each other, even if the No Way Home hype potentially could've drawn more audiences. Meanwhile, this gives Sony extra time to hopefully see COVID cases drop and make audiences more comfortable going to theaters. Now, it will just be intriguing to see how much interest Morbius receives after so many delays whenever it does arrive.
