Morbius underwent major changes after shooting wrapped. Not only were all those Spider-Man references scrapped, but the entire final battle was reshot and Fast & Furious star Tyrese's role ended up being cut down to almost nothing.
The actor, who played Simon Stroud, has a prosthetic arm which was never explained and, in an earlier cut, was meant to show off what it could do.
Talking to CBR about his new movie Bloodline Killer, Tyrese reflected on his Marvel role - which he once believed had earned Martin Scorsese's approval in a now-infamous meme - and the disappointment which came with seeing his performance left on the cutting room floor.
"I don't know, man, I'm waiting on the call," Tyrese said of a possible sequel. "I would be honored to dance with Daniel Espinosa and the crew again, [and] Jared Leto, yeah, I would love it. I would love if if that opportunity presented itself, yeah."
"I don't know. The arm was in the trailer, and I definitely had to put that thing on for at least two to three hours a day in the make-up trailer, so, I don't know," the actor said of his character's cut storyline. "It felt like it went from 'This is what we're going to do,' to some type of issues that they had in post-production. Something. I don't know."
"I definitely did a lot of scenes that was chopped out of the movie. I had a full-on fight, and brawl, with the villain, Matt Smith. I had a full-on fight scene with Matt Smith in London, where we filmed at a park, and it was crazy," he explained, referring to the original final battle. "And my arm was all over that scene, and they chopped that out of the movie, because I guess the presence of my arm, you wouldn't have been able to edit around that."
"I definitely asked some questions. It wasn't chopped because of the running time," Tyrese mused. "Normally, you'll lose a couple scenes because they're trying to figure out how to squeeze it within that hour-fifty, two-hour window. But, yeah, I was very disappointed that they chopped that scene...I definitely wish that that fight scene had made the movie. It was crazy."
You've got to feel for the Fast & Furious vet, particularly as the final cut of Morbius was eviscerated by critics (we don't know whether the previous version was any better, but it can't have been worse).
His co-star, Al Madrigal, expressed similar sentiments to us back in 2022 when he said, "You saw a complete alternate ending to this entire thing...That scene you saw pictures from was shot during the day and the rationale was, ‘We have a vampire movie. We can’t have the big final fight scene happen during the day.’ At some point, me and Tyrese fought Matt Smith. I shot for six days and none of it was shown."
Jared Leto isn't expected to reprise the role of Morbius' in Sony's Spider-Verse, so none of the actors involved in this one are likely to get a second chance.