Sony is in the works on a movie about “El Muerto,” a Latino antihero, as part of its crop of Marvel characters, and they’ve tapped recording superstar Bad Bunny to play the luchador comics character.
Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group President Sanford Panitch announced the live-action “El Muerto” movie as part of the studio’s CinemaCon presentation in Las Vegas on Monday, and he further announced that the new film will debut on January 12, 2024, exclusively in theaters.
“El Muerto” is the first Latino character to lead a Marvel film, and the antihero character is also known as Juan Carlos Estrada Sanchez, the son of a luchador who finds himself next in line to inherit the ancestral power of “El Muerto,” which is the powers and a mask worn by a super-powered wrestler.
Bad Bunny’s jump into the ring on the big screen is a natural fit for him. As a lifelong wrestling fan, Bad Bunny jumped into the WWE ring at last year’s WrestleMania, training with the promotion’s wrestlers to learn several advanced moves.
The character appeared in a Spider-Man comic in which the luchador wrestler attended a charity event organized by J. Jonah Jameson in which he hoped that El Muerto would defeat Spider-Man and unmask him in the ring.
“El Muerto” is part of a series of films based on Marvel characters that Sony is developing with varying degrees of connection to the main “Spider-Man” universe. While this spring’s “Morbius” posted tepid box office numbers with $69 million domestic and $156 million worldwide, Sony is moving forward with films based on Spidey villain “Kraven the Hunter” and Spidey ally “Madame Web,” both of which are set for release in 2023.
While it remains to be seen if “El Muerto” will tease future crossovers with “Spider-Man” or other Sony/Marvel film characters, studio insiders have said that not all of their Marvel projects will be developed as “Spider-Man” spinoffs, with some serving as stand-alone features.
Bad Bunny, whose real name is Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio made his film debut in the upcoming “Bullet Train” from director David Leitch and starring Brad Pitt, also from Sony. The Puerto Rican rapper and singer and a multi-time Grammy winner.