Jared Leto Compares Playing Morbius In A Marvel Movie To A Pressure Cooker

Morbius would have released in theaters already under normal circumstances but the unprecedented circumstances surrounding gatherings have now resulted in Sony's Marvel film to be pushed back to early 2022. The film stars Jared Leto as the titular vampire. Leto is no stranger to big comic book movies, having taken on one of the most iconic characters in all of comic book lore when he played the Joker in Suicide Squad (a role he recently reprised for Zack Snyder's Justice League). Still, the actor admits that playing a lead role in a Marvel movie feels like nothing short of a "pressure cooker."

"It's a big, fun movie filled with action," Leto said in a conversation with Denzel Washington during Variety's Actors on Actors. The two are currently promoting their Little Things movie but found himself diving into some Morbius chatter. "It's a brilliant doctor, a researcher, who starts off trying to find a cure for a very rare disease that he has and about 1,000 other people in the world have. I was interested in this role because he goes on this journey from dying to finding a cure for this disease and becoming incredibly healthy, and then having things change in a way that he becomes monstrous. So, it's a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde, which is of course a classic role."

Leto, who has performed to gigantic crowds around the world and starred in massive film franchises, does admit that Marvel movies come with an added pressure but not necessarily for the reasons one might quickly think. "It's a pressure cooker," Leto said. "You have a clock ticking. They're expensive films. And so, all of the decisions and the time to make those decision are a little bit more heated and so it can be a little more stressful. I think it's more common with these big movies, you don't really start with a gem of a script."

These massive films call for a team to work as just that as a means to find success. "You start with a hope and a dream and an idea of something," Leto said. "And you all try to work as hard as you can, in this given amount of time, to make it as good as it can be. And I think it's the first time I've ever starred in a big movie like this in my entire career, so it was new territory. I generally hide out in the shadows."

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Morbius hits theaters on January 21, 2022.