Panned by critics, yet 'Morbius' tops North American box office

It may have been skewered by critics, not a common reception for a film adapted from

Marvel

comics, but still, Columbia Pictures' 'Morbius', starring Jared Leto, opened on top of the North American box office to a projected $38 million to $41 million from 4,268 locations.

That's a fairly moderate opening figure, according to a news report, for the latest entry into the

Sony Pictures Universe of Marvel Characters

(which includes Tom Hardy's two 'Venom' movies and the upcoming 'Kraven the Hunter'), but with a $75 million production budget, 'Morbius' is a less imposing financial investment for Sony than the usual comic book action spectacle.

The film, which was set for a July 2020 release, was hindered by numerous theatrical release delays due to Covid-19. "That schedule shuffling," notes Variety, "led to numerous marketing reboots that made 'Morbius' a bit more costly."

The Marvel film was utterly ravaged by critics, notching up a dismal 17 per cent aggregate approval score on

Rotten Tomatoes

. Variety's film critic

Owen Gleiberman

called it "a movie in which it's clear that no one ever sent the script back for a rewrite with the instructions, 'Please add a script.' As in: Add spice, add dialogue, add something so that the movie plays like more than a barely coloured-in diagram."

What's more, the film earned a Cinema Score rating of 'C+', indicating that 'Morbius' didn't leave much of an impression on general audiences.

Also inauspicious for 'Morbius' is the calendar month ahead, which will see a fair amount of competition emerge at multiplexes, including

Universal

's retro-action spectacle 'Ambulance', Paramount's speedy sequel 'Sonic the Hedgehog 2' and the 'Harry Potter' spin-off from Warner Bros., 'Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore'.