One of the weirder superhero film projects announced over the last few years looks like it won’t make it to your local theater: Sony’s El Muerto starring music superstar Bad Bunny has been taken off the schedule. The film would have been the first live action Marvel film to star a Latine character.
A somewhat jury-rigged spinoff of Sony’s Spider-verse the film was to be released in January 2024, but the writer’s strike took its toll on the production schedule. In addition, Bad Bunny is very busy touring the world as one of the most popular musicians on earth, so finding a slot when the film can actually be made will be tricky.
In addition to Bunny, wrestler Mercedes Varnado and actor Marvin Jones III were also rumored to be cast, with Jones reprising his voicework role as villain Tombstone. Jonas Cuaron, son of Alfonso Cuaron, director of Desierto and Chupa, had signed on to direct.
Although the idea of Bunny starring in a vehicle designed for him based on a VERY obscure Marvel character is odd enough, there’s more.
I’d had a note to circle back to El Muerto since it was announced at Cinemacon back in May 2021. The character, a luchadore with superpowers named Juan-Carlos Estrada Sanchez, was barely a Z-lister in Spidey’s rogues gallery: he appeared in only two comics, debuting in Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #16 from 2006, by Peter David, Roger Cruz, Oclair Albert, Victor Olazaba, Chris Sotomayor and Cory Petit.
When the movie was announced, I wrote:
As for El Muerto, the comics character, his comics history can give the multiverse some competition as something we know frighteningly little about. According to a Marvel character page, he’s (what else?) a masked wrestler who carries on a long legacy of masked wrestlers. His mask gives him superstrength – and at one point he fought Spider-Man. And he appeared in two stories. According to Deadline, it was Bad Bunny’s camp that unearthed the character, and presented the idea to Sony, so pretty impressive research job there!
You can kinda piece things together from this: Bad Bunny wanted to be in a superhero movie and his team did a great job of research to find a character that fit not only his love of wrestling (Bunny has made several appearances in WWE including a match at Wrestlemania) and would would open the Spider-Verse to a whole new audience.
The reason I had it in my tickler file is that there was ALREADY a movie called El Muerto based on a comic book about a superpowered Latino, played by Wilmer Valderrama!
Released back in 2007, the film was based on the indie comic El Muerto by Javier Hernandez, who initially published it under his own Los Comex imprint in 1998. The character has appeared sporadically since then, most recently in a Kickstarted 25th anniversary edition….which is just shipping this month! (You can also buy it in comics shops and on Amazon (affiliate link))
Hernandez has stayed busy in comics circles, including co-founding the Latino Comics Expo, with the next edition held this September. I wrote to Hernendez to see what he was up to and he said he’s busy celebrating El Muerto’s 25th anniversary this year. He also just designed a mural for Steve Ditko, that was installed in Ditko’s hometown, Johnstown, PA, and it’s pretty spectacular.
While few people would confuse the two film versions, with one being part of the well-known Spider-verse and the other a small indie comic, the characters have a lot of similarities beyond the name. (The Valderrama film is now called The Dead One on streaming platforms.) I have no idea if any trademark issues came up, but since the Bunny film actually went into production, any issues must have been sorted out.
Bad Bunny’s version of El Muerto sounded pretty goofy, a mere sliver of the military-industrial superhero complex. Will it return when the writers strike finally ends? Were you looking forward to it? Let us know in the comments.
UPDATE: Javier Hernandez wrote to us to clarify that his El Muerto is NOT a masked wrestler, just a 21 year old guy who turns into an Aztec zombie. So I guess no infringement there at all. Also his comics company is called Los Comex. We regret the errors.
In addition many reports today that Bad Bunny has dropped out of the film altogether, although not from reliable sources. We’ll update as more information becomes available. ¡Viva El Muerto!
