Will Morbius’ new release date affect Sony’s Spider-verse?

Sony’s Morbius has just been pushed back several months, so how will this affect the rest of Sony’s Spider-Man universe?

The year of 2020 may go without a summer blockbuster season with the novel coronavirus pandemic putting nearly all of the movies out of theaters for months on end. And Sony is the next studio to make the call to delay several of its feature films. While the first round of film delays were all for the remainder of March and April, more films slated for May, June and July are also beginning to see changes taking place.

Among the Sony movies being pushed are Ghostbusters: Afterlife (now opening March 5, 2021), Uncharted (October 8, 2021) and Morbius (March 19, 2021).

While two of those movies should be relatively sound with new release dates, Morbius is a different story for one of many reasons: it’s one thread in a web of technically two movie universes. Morbius is, of course, less dependent and depended upon in Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe. But over on the Sony side, the studio is looking to build up a cohesive Marvel movie universe with Spider-Man anchored at the center.

Nothing is officially set in stone regarding Morbius‘ link to the Spider-verse, but potential leaks have speculated that the movie has a direct tie-in with Venom that will tease the next sequel. If you don’t want to be let in on spoilers, you can read more about that potential leak here. But in general, there’s one scene in particular that would directly impact the plot of Venom 2. If that scene is in fact in the movie, then that presents a problem for a completely different reason: Venom 2‘s release date has not yet been moved back.

As it stands right now, Venom 2 is still set to come out October 2020. Surely, both movies are probably designed to be standalone in some regard — i.e., you could probably watch either movie and not be completely lost without having seen the other. But at the same time, if Morbius does carry a thread of an overarching plot that leads to Venom 2, it might cause a bit of confusion as to why we’re seeing events in reverse chronological order. (Although, the scene in Morbius could totally work as a bit of an Easter egg for Venon 2 rather than being a set-up type of scene.)

It’s not to say that events can’t be told out of order in a movie universe. Ant-Man and the Wasp, for example, was released after Avengers: Infinity War and contained scenes prior to the snap. Captain Marvel, for example, also was released after Infinity War, and that movie took place in the ’90s. Still, those choices to release movies after Infinity War were deliberate, meaning despite them taking place in the past, they had a carefully planned set-up for the next big movie, Endgame.

Even then, Morbius and Venom 2 will be leading up to Spider-Man 3, which is still set to come out July 16, 2021. That movie may be solidly locked in place. And it could be possible that Morbius and Venom 2 can come out in either order so long as Spider-Man 3 is the third of those films to be released. No major plot points have been leaked for Venom 2, though, so there’s no telling if they were planning on having a major lead-in to Spider-Man 3 with that movie.

What’s clear is that Sony will have to take some time to think about how they’ll want to arrange each of these movies within the next year so that the Spider-verse is still cohesive. With the movie universe still so young, that means they’ve got a shot at either making it or breaking it with these next few films.