Daniel Espinosa directed Sony’s ‘Morbius’ in 2022. The film lost its potential for a franchise after making $167.5 million on a budget of $75-80 million at the box office.
Espinosa took on some of the blame for the failure and admitted in a recent chat with Deadline that he wasn’t the right choice for the directorship:
“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.”
The Film’s Result Made Him Leave Hollywood
Espinosa’s work on ‘Morbius’ earned him a Golden Raspberry Awards nomination for Worst Director in 2022. This pushed him to leave Hollywood and return to Europe to continue his career:
“I spent 12 years in America … and it slowly got apparent to me that what I was doing made me slowly drift away from the reason I actually started making pictures. So, I really had a necessity somehow to get back to why I do movies at all.”
Neither The Director Nor His Attempted Franchise Could Thrive
Daniel Espinosa had his breakthrough with 2010’s ‘Easy Money,’ which was one of the most successful Swedish films ever made. He achieved success with his first Hollywood project, ‘Safe House,’ as well, but only got modest results after that.
‘Morbius’ became his most criticized work so far. The 2022 film’s failure plus ‘Madame Web’s recent box office results also made the future of Sony’s ‘Spider-Man’ universe unclear.
