When it comes to box office success, Morbius and Avatar: The Way of Water could not be further apart, but one horrifying piece of fan art has combined the two movies in a poster that is sure to give you nightmares. Coming with the name “Morbatar: The Way of Morb”, the poster puts Morbius face front and centre in a terrifying vision of what could have been…but thankfully wasn’t. You can see the poster below:

Avatar: The Way of Water arrived in theaters this weekend to a mighty opening box office that could potentially be the first step on the movie’s way to becoming the biggest movie of the year. While there is still a long way to go before that happens, the film’s opening domestic weekend almost ended higher than the entire worldwide gross of Morbius.

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Back at the beginning of the year, Morbius landed in cinemas after a lengthy series of delays. While marketing of the movie originally included a number of references to Spider-Man, early audiences discovered that these moments were not included in the final movie and even the tacked on post-credits scene featuring Michael Keaton’s Vulture weren’t enough to appease the majority of fans. For that reason, Morbius’s worldwide box office came to barely double its budget, and once marketing costs are taken into account the picture isn’t particularly promising for Sony’s Spider-Man Universe.

How Did Morbius Go So Wrong?

     Sony Pictures Releasing

When it came to Morbius’ release, the Covid pandemic saw the film delayed numerous times before it finally made its debut in the wake of Spider-Man: No Way Home. Coming just weeks after the MCU movie, Morbius seemed certainly to capture the attention with its connection to the webbed wonder. However, the movie mainly missed its mark by heavily featuring Spider-Man connections in its trailer and marketing, only to not include these in the final cut.

Almost as soon as audience reviews began to surface online it became clear that the movie was not what people expected to get, and not just because of a lack of Spider-Man. For that reason, Morbius suffered one of the biggest second week declines in cinema history, and its critic review scores plummeted to a barely there 15% approval rate.

Despite all of this, the film saw its audience review score on Rotten Tomatoes soar to 71% thanks to a high amount of reviews giving the movie five stars and citing it as the “greatest movie of all time.” While many reasonably good movies and TV shows have often suffered negative review bombing, Morbius became one of the unique movies to receive a round of positive review bombing that greatly improved its overall review score.

However, none of this can take away the fact that other than becoming very popular on social media as it was mercilessly mocked with numerous memes, Morbius was not the hit the studio hoped for, and could have potentially derailed the entire Sony Spider-Man Universe before it really began.