With the first trailer now out in the wild, all eyes are on Morbius. Up until now, information has been thin on the ground about what Jared Leto would be up to as the Living Vampire and one thing we’ve heard quite often is that in the wake of Disney and Sony Pictures making up after their tiff last year, that the movie would showcase the growing link between Sony’s Spider-Verse and Disney’s MCU. This connection will apparently see J.K. Simmons’ J. Jonah Jameson appearing in Morbius and there have even been rumors that Spider-Man will cameo in the movie.
The nature of that cameo appears to have been confirmed in the trailer, too, as we see Morbius emerging from an alleyway with a Spider-Man poster on the wall, with ‘MURDERER’ scrawled across it. Given that Spider-Man: Far From Home ended with the hero’s identity being revealed and Peter Parker framed for the murder of Mysterio, this makes sense for an MCU connection. But closer inspection has revealed that something isn’t right.
That’s because, for some reason, Morbius’ set design team have used a picture of the Tobey Maguire Spider-Man suit from the Sam Raimi movies. Not just that, but the exact image has now been identified as a promotional shot/in-game loading screen for the free Raimi costume DLC from the PlayStation 4 Marvel’s Spider-Man game.
So, what gives? Well, I think it’s safe to rule out that Morbius secretly takes place in the Raimiverse. Ordinarily, I’d assume that a slightly lazy production designer found an image online and popped it in the movie without realizing it’d be so prominently displayed. But the battle about the rights to use Spider-Man in various universes was so high profile that you have to imagine even this background element was heavily scrutinized. So, who knows?
Perhaps Sony will come forward soon and clear things up. If they don’t, though, we’ll have to wait until July 31st, 2020 to find out for sure, as that’s when Morbius hits theaters.