Unused Morbius concept art from illustrator Darrell Warner gives Jared Leto’s Living Vampire a transformative look, complete with massive bat ears.
Concept art for Sony Pictures’ Morbius gives Jared Leto’s Living Vampire some gigantic, but terrifying ears.
Shared on Instagram by costume concept illustrator Darrell Warner, the artwork shows off a potential character design for Morbius in Sony’s Spider-Man spinoff. Warner chose to give the Living Vampire a look that incorporated both his Marvel Comics design and mutated man-bat facial features.
“Whilst brilliant artists Stateside of the likes of [concept artist Constantine Sekeris] had been developing the transformative look of Morbius, Director Daniel Espinosa asked me to have a quick go too,” Warner wrote, stating that the image shared was “most likely the one that came out best.” Notably, the art features a pair of humongous ears, though this aspect of the design was dropped in favor of smaller pointed ears for the finished film.
Jared Leto Embraces Morbius’ Transformative Nature
In a previous interview, Leto stated that it was Morbius’ transformative nature that drew him to the role in the first place. “I’m attracted to roles where there’s an opportunity to transform – physical transformation, but also mental, emotional, any and all,” Leto said. “I was excited about taking on the challenge of putting a character on screen that had never been on screen before. It gets harder and harder to find, and that was unique about this – a Marvel character that had never been portrayed outside of a couple of episodes of a Spider-Man cartoon.”
Created by Roy Thomas and Gil Kane, Morbius‘ leap from comics to the big screen has a complex history. Marvel’s Living Vampire was originally set for a cameo in 1998’s Blade until he was cut in favor of saving him for a larger role in a sequel. In 2000, Artisan Entertainment acquired the film rights to Morbius as part of a larger deal to produce Marvel film adaptations. When the rights with Artisan expired, Morbius was absorbed into the Spider-Man film rights under Sony.
Morbius would be just one of many films to be a part of Sony’s Spider-Verse separate from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With the Oscar-winning Leto in the title role and Safe House director Daniel Espinosa at the helm, Morbius was the next installment in the Spider-Verse after the success of Venom and Venom: Let There Be Carnage. However, the film underperformed at the box office and became the subject of countless online memes. In response, Sony re-released Morbius for a limited time, which only brought its total domestic earnings from $73.3 million to $73.6 million.
Morbius is currently available to stream on Netflix.
Source: via Instagram
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