“To make a movie through committee, I think, is very hard,” Daniel Espinosa said of his 2022 superhero flick.
In the world of viral movie marketing, Morbius is a fascinating case study for all the wrong reasons. Initially released to a critical hammering in 2022, the film denied a decent opening to gross a fairly lackluster (for a superhero film) $165m at the global box office.
After viral memes began (ironically) singing the film’s praises, Sony attempted to ride the internet wave and put it back into cinemas the following year. As a result, Morbius holds the unhappy accolade of being one of the few films to flop at the box office twice, making just $280,000 on its second opening.
All that, we imagine, can’t have been easy on director Daniel Espinosa, especially when a lot of the film’s flaws seemed to be out of his control.
Read more: Madame Web | A look at what went so incredibly, fascinatingly wrong
Speaking to Deadline at the Taormina Film Festival last week, the Safe House director was asked about his experience on the Sony-Marvel blockbuster, and it doesn’t sound like an entirely un-stressful one.
He said: “To make a movie through committee, I think, is very hard, and I felt in the end that maybe a different director would have been a better fit.”
“I’m known amongst the studios to be a person with a lot of opinions, and maybe they were not looking for that kind of director.”
The project at least seemed unpleasant enough that Espinosa’s next film (and the reason he was at Taormina in the first place), Madame Luna, has seen the filmmaker head in a completely different direction. After 12 years in Hollywood, the transition back out of the studio system was a tricky one.
“I just realized, there’s no producers, there’s no money people — it’s me, my photographer, my first AD, a very sparse team — and I got a complete anxiety attack because you’re so used to the fight,” he said.
“The fight defines you, so I think the hard thing with the American industry is that the fight is almost a necessity, but it’s hard not to start patting yourself on the back that you’re fighting and forgetting what you’re fighting about.”
The Italian-set drama tells the story of an Eritrean refugee attempting to hide her identity as a notorious human trafficker, as she goes through the same hardships as the people she used to exploit. No UK release date has been confirmed yet.
