Matt Smith responded with disbelief after learning Keanu Reeves was once caught watching Morbius on a flight, before joking that even he wouldn’t choose the critically panned superhero film as in-flight entertainment.
Appearing on the medieval-themed YouTube talk show Royal Court, Smith simply exclaimed “F*** off” when told that the John Wick star was “once spotted watching Morbius on a flight”.
“You are joking,” Smith told host Brittany Broski, before launching into an earnest tribute to Reeves, calling the The Matrix star one of cinema’s great leading men.
“I love Keanu Reeves,” Smith said.
“Keanu Reeves, what a movie star. And just looks like an angel, you know what I mean? Like if you were to get a guardian angel in life, please God, let it be Keanu Reeves.”
“I genuinely think that that period of movies, that sort of ’90s period of films I just love, from Point Break onwards. I just think he’s the best,” he added.
Released in 2022, Morbius starred Jared Leto as Dr Michael Morbius, a Nobel-winning biochemist suffering from a rare blood disorder who transforms himself into a vampire-like being while attempting to cure his illness. The film also featured Smith as Milo, Morbius’s childhood friend and eventual rival, alongside Adria Arjona, Jared Harris, and Tyrese Gibson.
Directed by Daniel Espinosa as part of Sony Pictures’ Spider-Man universe, the film was made on a reported budget of $75m and grossed $167.6m worldwide.
While it opened at No 1 at the US box office with $39m, its momentum quickly collapsed, suffering a steep 74 per cent second-weekend drop, one of the worst falls for a modern superhero film.
The Independent’s Clarisse Loughrey gave the film two stars, describing it as “a work of shameless corporate desperation”.
Despite Smith’s clear admiration for Reeves, it didn’t stop the Dr Who star from mocking the latter’s choice of film.
When asked what he watched on flights, Smith’s answer was immediate: “Not f****** Morbius.”
He added: “Jesus Christ. My god. He must have really gone through the BA library to get to that.”
When Broski suggested Reeves might have been drunk, Smith joked: “Yeah. What was he? He was having a moment. He’s on the Valium or something.”
However, Smith quickly clarified that the jabs were aimed at the film rather than Reeves himself, adding: “No, but what a legend. I love Keanu Reeves. I just want to make that really clear.”
In 2022, Smith spoke candidly about Morbius’ poor reception and said the film had been “thrown under the bus”, but he had made peace with its failure.
“You just have to roll with it. What else are you gonna do? It’s a film, at the end of the day, we’re not saving lives,” he told Rolling Stone UK.
Sony delayed Morbius six times between 2020 and 2022 due to pandemic-era scheduling reshuffles, before finally releasing it in April 2022.
It later developed an unexpected second life online as the subject of viral memes, with social media users ironically treating it as a cultural phenomenon and popularising the catchphrase “It’s Morbin’ Time”, despite it never appearing in the film.
Hoping to capitalise on the meme-driven buzz, Sony re-released Morbius in around 1,000 US cinemas in June 2022, only for the film to earn just about $300,000 over its opening weekend, prompting jokes that it had become a rare box office bomb twice over.
Morbius is not the only superhero flop, however. DC’s Supergirl, which was released last week, debuted to a disappointing $38m domestically.
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