For those that have watched Sony’s latest venture into building a separate Marvel Cinematic Universe, Morbius sets up a curious crossover between its various anti-hero characters. Somehow, MCU’s Vulture (Michael Keaton) lands in this new universe in the film’s post-credit sequence. Not just that, he even ends up meeting up with the newly minted vampire to pitch an idea of teaming up to face off against Spider-Man. Ignoring the fact that Spidey isn’t really a factor at any point in the film and its out-of-character, Keaton was a big part of the ongoing trailers. So, it’s strange he’s suddenly relegated to a post-credit sequence.
Director Daniel Espinosa got a chance to discuss the challenge of adapting to Spider-Man: No Way Home as the film introduced the concept of the live-action Spider-Verse. It also opened up the confirmation that Venom was part of a separate universe, which turns out was Sony’s idea. So, the fact they are now separate universes complicated matters and forced them to adapt elements of the story. To not overcomplicate things, they just added him at the end as a result.
The first thing that happened was that we had Michael Keaton because we were planning on doing this. But then when Spider-Man: No Way Home came out, it said, “This is how the visual effects are.” And then the idea of having him just encountering him in that universe seemed too complicated, and then we put it in the end.
Daniel Espinosa
A lot of the piece highlights the challenges they’ve faced throughout production. Morbius was originally going to release two years earlier. So, we may have faced a very different kind of connection between the MCU and Sony’s attempt at one. We’ll see if the physical release might include a hint at the original scenes and how Michael Keaton was originally going to fit into the story.
Source: Uproxx
