Doctor Who and House of the Dragon star Matt Smith can’t believe that Matrix legend Keanu Reeves was recently spotted watching his infamously terrible superhero movie Morbius while on a flight.
During an appearance on the Brittany Broski’s Royal Court podcast, Smith was stunned to hear that his widely-derided Sony’s Spider-Man Universe (SSU) spinoff had been viewed by Keanu Reeves.
“F*** off, you are joking!” Smith said, apparently incredulous that Reeves would subject himself to the Jared Leto-led disaster. “He must have been having a moment,” Smith continued. “He was on the valium or something. No but what a legend, I love Keanu Reeves, I just want to make that really clear.”
Asked what he watched on planes, Smith bluntly replied: “Not f***ing Morbius, Jesus Christ. My god, [Reeves] must have really gone through the British Airways library to be getting to that.”
Released in 2022 as one of Sony’s various mediocre SSU experiments, Morbius was widely panned by critics and fans, with the film ultimately becoming a meme for its lack of quallity. Smith played Milo Morbius in the movie, surrogate brother to Leto’s lead character. Four years on, there’s no suggestion that any of its characters are set to return.
IGN’s Morbius review returned a 5/10 score, and dubbed it as an origin story “that lacks fangs and bite, marred by shoddy computer-digital fights and an overly serious tone that does the darkened flick no favors.”
This isn’t the first time that Smith has addressed the widespread response to Morbius post-release. Previously, the actor suggested that the film had been “thrown under the bus,” and told Rolling Stone that “you just have to roll with it. What else are you gonna do? It’s a film, at the end of the day, we’re not saving lives. For whatever reason, it didn’t quite work out and… It is what it is.”
Sony pushed on with its efforts to adapt the Marvel characters it still holds the rights to with 2022’s Madame Web and 2024’s Kraven the Hunter, alongside its more commercially successful Venom trilogy. Currently, and perhaps thankfully, Sony has no further live-action SSU movies in production.
Next up for Spider-Man is of course this month’s highly-anticipated MCU entry Spider-Man: Brand New Day, while Sony has its third animated Spider-Verse movie due next year.
Image credit: Kristina Bumphrey/Variety via Getty Images
Tom Phillips is IGN’s News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
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