Sony Pictures has announced a new Spider-Man spinoff film called “El Muerto,” and Benito Antonio Martinez Ocasio AKA Bad Bunny will play the title role.
El Muerto tells the story of the antihero son of a luchador who is next in line to “inherit the ancestral power of ‘El Muerto,'” Sony said in a release. El Muerto will be the first Latino character to lead a live-action Marvel movie. Sony also recently announced another Spider-Man spinoff movie, Madame Web, which marks the first female character in the Spidey universe with her own film.
“The character of El Muerto aka Juan Carlos was a super powered wrestler who originally fought Spider-Man in a charity wrestling match in which he nearly unmasked the webslinger before being stung by Spider-Man with a paralyzing poison,” Deadline reported. “After his oppressor El Dorado came to claim his life, he was saved by Spider-Man, after which the two team up to defeat Dorado.”
According to Deadline, Sony executives enjoyed what they saw of Bad Bunny in early cuts of the movie Bullet Train. Bad Bunny then apparently dug into the Spider-Man library himself to find a Latin character that would fit with what he wanted, eventually discovering El Muerto.
“The studio loved the idea and the hope is to move fast on the project given Bad Bunny’s busy touring and acting schedule,” the report said.
El Muerto releases on January 12, 2024 from Sony’s Columbia Pictures. Bad Bunny is a Latin Grammy winning singer, and his involvement with this project was announced during Cinemacon. He also recently appeared on Narcos: Mexico.
