Apparently never hearing of the tragedy of Snakes on a Plane, Sony Pictures saw endless memes of its superhero movie Morbius as a good thing and rereleased it in theaters this weekend.
Even star Jared Leto got in on the fun, with a viral social media post of himself getting caught reading the script for Morbius 2: It’s Morbin’ Time.
However, “any publicity is good publicity” didn’t quite translate to a theatrical goose to the poorly performing movie’s bottom line.
The critic- and fan-panned film jumped back into 1,000 theaters on Friday and swiftly proved fans had been laughing at and not with the filmmakers: The movie made just $85,000 on its first day of rerelease.
The situation was avoidable, had the studio remembered the lessons of 2006’s Snakes on a Plane, starring Samuel L. Jackson — a movie whose trailer was so thoroughly memed, before memes were a thing — that it led to reshoots.
There, too, however, fan-suggested improvements like Jackson’s character insisting he’d “had it with these emmer-effing snakes on this emmer-effing plane” didn’t help the movie’s box office fate. Then again, the budget was small, so it ended up turning a profit on paper.
Unlike its immortal vampiric hero, Morbius now appears dead for good — but the jokes live on.
“Sony has announced MORBIUS will be released once a month until their demands are met,” snarked one Twitter user.
“It’s a hard pill to swallow but…the risk will never be zero. we will always be on the verge of another morbius release,” jabbed another.
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