Jared Harris Confirms He’s Not Doctor Octopus in ’Morbius’
After a first-look trailer for Marvel and Sony’s newest villain origin story Morbius, fans went straight to work on theories of who’s playing who. One of the speculations involved actor Jared Harris, whose brief on-screen presence revealed him to be some sort of mentor figure to Michael Morbius. Spider-Man experts surmised that Harris’ role is none other than Spidey’s infamous enemy Dr. Otto Octavius, also known as Dr. Octopus.
While that’s a tantalizing suggestion, Harris set the record straight at the 2020 SAG Awards, where he was nominated for HBO’s Chernobyl. When asked if he was indeed playing Doc Ock, Harris cut straight to the point. "No," he told Variety. “I love the imagination that the fans have, it’s exciting for me to think about the imagination that that fans have. But yeah no, it’s not.” Case closed.
From the looks of it, Morbius will take a page out of Joker’s book. Jared Leto stars as the titular character, a man who attempts to cure his own rare blood disease. He escapes death by transforming himself into a superhuman vampire. Similar to Joker, Morbius paints a multi-dimensional portrait of a character with a dark, troubling past. Doctor Who’s Matt Smith accompanies Morbius the Living Vampire as Loxias Crown, and Adria Arjona (6 Underground) plays Morbius’ fiancée, Martine Bancroft. Michael Keaton makes a surprise cameo at the end of the trailer, last seen in Spider-Man: Homecoming as the Vulture.
Morbius is set to hit theaters on July 31.
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