'Morbius' underwhelmed at the box office, but Sony's Spider-Man universe is still its most bankable franchise

• Sony announced on Monday a new Marvel movie, "El Muerto," starring Bad Bunny.
• It comes as the studio's "Morbius" release disappointed at the box office.
• But with rights to hundreds of Spider-Man characters, Sony's Marvel franchise is still its biggest.

On the heels of its release of "Morbius," Sony is betting on more Spider-Man characters at the box office.

The studio announced on Monday during the annual exhibition conference CinemaCon that the musician Bad Bunny would star in "El Muerto," a new addition to its Marvel universe.

"Morbius," in which Jared Leto played a vampire antihero, underwhelmed at the box office, but Sony's Marvel universe is still its most bankable franchise. It owns the film rights to hundreds of Spider-Man characters, from allies to villains to love interests.

The studio also has "Kraven the Hunter," "Madame Webb," and a third "Venom" movie in the works, along with sequels to its animated movie "Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse."

"Morbius" has grossed $156 million at the worldwide box office since opening early this month, with $69 million of that coming from the US. 

While "Morbius" had a smaller budget than most comic-book movies today, at $75 million, it's still an underwhelming figure compared to "Venom," which grossed over $800 million globally in 2018, and its sequel "Venom: Let There Be Carnage," which crossed $500 million last year.

It shows the potential limits of Sony's Marvel movies at the box office, at least the ones not involving Spider-Man himself. Not all of them will be a "Venom."

"Morbius" was plagued by terrible reviews ahead of its release and received a 16% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes. And audiences gave it a C+ grade at CinemaScore, a company that surveys audiences on a movie's opening night.

Without strong word of mouth, the movie dropped a dramatic 74% in its second weekend at the US box office.

Paul Dergarabedian, the Comscore media analyst, said that Sony at least tried to "to swing for the fences and branch out beyond the more well-known characters" in its Spider-Man library, something it will look to do again with "El Muerto."

"It will be exciting to see how a film like 'El Muerto' and other future projects will be received by audiences, and which characters could have the potential to breakout and become the next 'Venom,'" he said.

Sony is banking on two things with "El Muerto": the studio touted it at CinemaCon as the first Marvel movie with a Latino lead, and Bad Bunny is a global superstar.

Spider-Man isn't Sony's only franchise. It also announced on Monday a new "Ghostbusters" movie, for instance. And its recent "Jumanji" movies have been hits.

But Spider-Man is its most consistent and lucrative, with the franchise — including those coproduced with Marvel Studios — earning more than $3 billion combined in the US alone. The studio has a sizable library of characters it can dive into at any given time.

"The Marvel component of Sony's long-term release strategy is vital to the overall success of the studio," Dergarabedian said. "Given the overwhelmingly positive box office and critical response to the "Spider-Man" and "Spider-Verse" series, it's essential that Sony makes a commitment to bringing films under this massively popular brand to the big screen now and in the years to come."

The Sony Pictures chairman Tom Rothman did show off on Monday the studio's non-franchise movies — including the Viola Davis-starring "The Woman King" and the action movie "Bullet Train" — and said that he doesn't believe that only sequels and superheroes are the future of cinema.

But for the time being, those franchise films are making the most money, by a long shot.

Sony also touted that it earned more than $3 billion at the global box office since last year's CinemaCon in August, as a sign that theaters are back. That was mostly thanks to "Let There Be Carnage" and "Spider-Man: No Way Home," both of which are superhero sequels.