We now have a better idea of what to expect from Jared Leto's living vampire in Morbius
Just yesterday, we reported that Jared Harris from Mad Men had joined Jared Leto in director Daniel Espinosa’s Morbius movie (a spin-off from the Spider-Man comics with no relation to the Spider-Man movies). We assumed that this meant Morbius would be full of actors named Jared, but, unfortunately for Jared Padalecki, that’s apparently not the case. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Tyrese Gibson has taken a break from dramatically overestimating his value to the Fast And Furious franchise in order to sign on to Morbius, despite the fact that his name is Tyrese Gibson and not Jared Gibson.
No offense to Tyrese Gibson, but the more interesting part of his casting is that we now have some details about the characters that Leto’s “living vampire” Morbius will be meeting up with in the movie. THR says Gibson will be playing an FBI agent hunting down Morbius, meaning Leto’s probably going to drink some blood and draw the ire of law enforcement officials at some point, with Adria Arjona playing Morbius’ “love interest” and Harris playing Morbius’ mentor—though THR doesn’t say if that’s a vampire mentor or a scientist mentor, as that was Morbius’ job before he became a vampire. Matt Smith, who is also not named Jared, will be playing the villain in Morbius, who is apparently a guy named Loxias Crown. He suffers from the same blood disease that led to Morbius turning into a vampire, meaning Loxias Crown will probably be an evil living vampire (which is good, since you can’t have a name like Loxias Crown and not be a vampire).
In other Morbius news, Leto shared a photo on Twitter to commemorate the first week of filming. You’ll notice that Leto’s forehead is obscured in the photo, which we can only assume was done on purpose so we could still make jokes about whether or not he’ll have a Suicide Squad-style forehead tattoo. What would Morbius’ forehead tattoo say? “Vampire” seems a little on-the-nose, but it’s not like the Joker’s “damaged” ink was very subtle.