Update: 11-14-17: This is old news, to see the latest news on Morbius, the Living Vampire, Click here.
Remember that time in the 90’s, when New Line Cinema, brought one of Marvel comics first superheroes to screen and made him into a superstar (thanks in large part to actor Weasley Snipes)?
New Line Cinema, at the time owned the rights to use Marvel’s vampire based characters (very similar to the way Fox’s deal with owning the word “mutants”) which included Blade, Deacon Frost, Hannibal King, Whistler, The Blood Pack, Lilith, Dracula and two other classic Marvel characters.
But It also seems New Line, at one point had the rights to use the monsters – The Living Vampire Morbius and Werewolf By Night in movies (which they almost did)! Morbius, the character first appeared as an antagonist in The Amazing Spider-Man #101 (Oct. 1971). Morbius went on to become a heroic, tragically flawed protagonist in his own series and other titles. Morbius is a man suffering from vampiric abilities and physical traits resulting from a biochemical experiment he conducted on himself. As opposed to supernatural means, Morbius is a sudo-vampire who does need to consume blood to survive, even at his own behests.
New Line Cinema actually used the Living Vampire Morbius in an alternate ending to the original Blade film. At the end of the film after Blade defeats Frost and the two survivors head to the roof where they look at the horizon of buildings. A distant figure could be seen, wearing a coat and a cloth over his face, with all intentions of it being Morbius. This has also been confirmed by David Goyer in the Blade DVD commentary, calling out the character Morbius by name. The story goes, that director Stephen Norrington and Goyer were setting up the sequel which would focus on Morbius as the villain, but Stephen left the Blade franchise and in comes Guillermo del Toro to make Blade 2 instead. Morbius was dropped and a new version of a vampire was introduced as the antagonist of the film.
Sam Raimi was more than ready to introduce the vampire Morbius in the forth installment of his Spider-Man franchise. Since the Spider-Man 4 film never happened, that idea was also tossed. Then comes the Easter Egg clues in Sony’s Amazing Spider-Man 2, where a close up look at the Oscorp secret files, reveals to us the name of Dr. Morbius (along with files for project Venom and Dr. Connors). Leaving fans to believe that Morbius is likely to be owned by Sony now.
Jack Russell aka Werewolf By Night showed up in a deleted scene from Blade Trinity as well. When Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and Whistler (Jessica Biel) are in a club, Jack Russell aka Werewolf By Night shows up! The deleted scene from Blade Trinity looks very cheesy but the on-set pictures of Werewolf by Night looked outstanding!
Just imagine how different the Blade franchise could have been if both character would have been used.
Since no new Blade films have been made in years, the movie rights for the Marvel hero and “vampires” have all been reverted back to Marvel. Maybe Blade and the Monsters film could come in the future, we can all hope and wish.
Blade video courtesy of youtube user.
