There's now just over a month to go before Morbius arrives in theaters, and we're hoping Sony Pictures plans to reveal more from filmmaker Daniel Espinosa's take on the Marvel Comics character in the coming weeks. Thankfully, a new trailer is coming this Monday, but for now, some intriguing new details have been revealed in the movie's press notes.
We suspected this would be the case, but star Jared Leto and VFX Supervisor Matthew E. Butler have both confirmed that the Living Vampire was brought to life solely through visual effects. Morbius is the type of character who could have been created on-screen with makeup and prosthetics, but the Oscar-winning actor was keen to reap the benefits that come with special effects.
"When you put a character on the screen for the first time, you have a big opportunity to create something. I was adamant from the beginning that we use technology to enhance and help with the transformation, especially of Morbius himself, because I thought that that’s where we would have fewest limitations," Leto explains. "There’s limitless potential using some of these new technologies, so it’s interesting to be part of that and to push the envelope."
Butler, meanwhile, shed some light on Morbius' transformation, explaining that "[he] can 'bloom' from his human version into the vampiric version and back again, so he’s not continually in that phase. He can go in and out - typically through anger. He needed to be able to morph into different expressions." To achieve that effect, Thanos-style motion-capture was utilised.
"We decided that the actors would perform on stage and we would recapture that performance with a marked-up array of dots on their faces and helmet cameras that can capture all of those subtleties," Butler reveals. "The software can translate that performance into the performance of a creature that is completely different. That’s something we achieved quite well with Thanos."
We're intrigued to see how all this comes together. There's absolutely nothing wrong with mo-cap being used for a character like Morbius, and Leto was no doubt excited to see what he could do with the technology after going through the traditional makeup process for movies like Suicide Squad and House of Gucci. Hopefully, it results in a version of the character that does the comic books justice.
Morbius will finally arrive in theaters on April 1.