The ongoing tale of Morbius is one of the most hilarious examples of the myopic navel-gazing of modern film studios. The most basic understanding of popularity, internet culture, or why people enjoy things still seems to elude the people who make billions of dollars to know which films will succeed.
Morbius returned to the big screen in a groundbreaking re-release campaign almost two months after its original release. While the initial run was moderately financially successful, its second attempt has seen a staggering average of $289 per theater. The average cost of a movie ticket in the United States hovers around $12, meaning each of the 1000 theaters that happily pulled Morbius up from its grave was rewarded with around 24 paying customers.
The corporate duel over Marvel's most beloved hero Spider-Man ended with a bizarre shared custody arrangement and substantial collateral damage on all sides. Sony, who previously produced the controversial Amazing Spider-Man films, continues to seek any way to lay claim to the brand. Their strategy, which they appear to be surprisingly dead set upon, is to adapt the story of individual figures of Spidey's rogues gallery into anti-heroes. Their first choice was obvious, resulting in the moderate success of Venom and the substantial downgrade of its sequel. Spider-Man has a ton of villains, and even if Eddie Brock is a tough act to follow, Sony made the unexpected choice of targeting Michael Morbius.
Everyone knew that Morbius wasn't going to work out, so creative and funny people did what they do best: they made jokes. If the internet has a superpower, it's irony, and ironic fandom for and enjoyment of Morbius became ubiquitous. The roast of Morbius was a party everyone was invited to, and when a lot of people pile onto something, that means a ton of engagement. The film and memes surrounding it couldn't seem to leave Twitter's trending topics list. Every social media erupted with gags at the film's expense. Every other fandom faced some invasion by barely-related memes. The ironic fandom formed a hive mind that could, if one squinted at it sideways, almost look like people enjoying the film. Sony saw what they believed was a ton of people having a great time and assumed they could capitalize on it.
The modern age of content generation is dominated by algorithms. Machines cannot tell the difference between sincere enjoyment and ironic enjoyment. Artists can, but the backlash towards actual creators involved with the project had a negative impact. Machines can only tell the people who hold the purse strings that something is being talked about substantially more than it should be. It makes sense that Sony was caught off guard, most bad movies only get popular decades after their initial release. There's even an argument to be made that Sony might have understood the jokes and put the film back out seeking the ironic dollar. Maybe Sony thought they had something akin to The Room on their hands, a midnight movie that they could get a cult audience excited about. The biggest hole in that possible theory is that the memes existed from the film's first trailer, and they didn't do much for the ticket sales the first time.
Either Sony is so glacial in its ability to follow the movement of internet trends that they somehow missed the memes for two full months or so dim in their understanding that irony does not occur to them. Either outcome paints a picture of an outdated, myopic, slow-witted dinosaur of a company that cannot understand what people want. Studios have always been a barrier to the creation of quality cinema, but the modern era moves so fast that the old world has no hope of ever catching up. Meaningful and successful pieces of art that come out of the film studio system are a Herculean effort of the artists involved that boldly defy the grim claw of the owners. This should serve as a lesson to fans and owners alike. While some studios will burn an entire franchise after one poor performance, others will cling to an idea until it kills them.
Morbius deserves all the laughter it has received and Sony losing a ton of cash on a staggering misreading of their audience is a divine punchline. The joke was never at the expense of the hardworking artists who put their time and effort behind a project. It was never targeted at sincere fans who enjoy the source material. There was venom behind all the jokes, the smiling mouths uttering "It's Morbin' Time" always hid fangs. The target of the jokes was always a blind studio pathetically trying in vain to make some cash from a marketable name. The fact that they still don't get what they did wrong is the funniest part.
Morbius isn't just funny because it's a bad movie, it's funny because Sony is more powerful than the superheroes they own, but they can still be tricked into an obvious trap by a few good memes. Don't stop now, meme fans. Let's see if we can mock them into blowing $100 million on a sequel.