Still in early development, Sony Pictures is gearing up for a wild box-office success with their newest Marvel-based film El Muerto. According to The Wrap, Mexican screenwriter and filmmaker Jonás Cuarón (Desierto) has boarded the project as director, with Grammy Award-winning recording artist Bad Bunny, or Benito A Martínez Ocasio, attached to star in the titular role. The script for Sony’s latest super installment is being penned by Blue Beetle writer Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer.
El Muerto will star Martínez Ocasio as the first Latino character to lead their own Marvel film as El Muerto, an antihero from the comics. In the original Marvel Comics, El Muerto, the super alter-ego of Juan-Carlos Estrada Sanchez, is a luchador whose powers are inherited generation to generation. These powers of strength and endurance are obtained only by facing off with – and defeating – their family’s oppressor El Dorado. Things go terribly wrong for young Juan-Carlos, and he’s given 10 years to prove himself worthy of his birthright. This journey of self-discovery ultimately pits him against Spider-Man in a struggle to unmask our friendly neighborhood hero, which could potentially tie into Jon Watts‘ Spider-Man trilogy.
Cuarón’s El Muerto will be the latest addition to the Marvel series that Sony is actively developing, which intertwine standalone characters in a web that connects them to actor Tom Holland‘s Spider-Man, and by degrees, the MCU, though not officially. Other movies included in this negotiated deal are the Venom movies starring Tom Hardy, J.C. Chandor‘s Kraven the Hunter, with Aaron Taylor Johnson as Spidey’s longtime foe, followed by Madame Web, with Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney.
Martínez Ocasio is a Puerto Rican rapper and actor, best known professionally as Bad Bunny. The artist most recently played his first villainous role in Sony’s Bullet Train, opposite Brad Pitt, though his other notable credits include F9: The Fast Saga, Narcos: Mexico and an upcoming role in the feature film American Sole with Camila Mendes (Do Revenge) currently in pre-production.
Filmmaker Cuarón made his directorial debut with 2007’s romantic drama Año uña, which he also wrote and produced. In 2013, he penned the script with his father, renowned director Alfonso Cuarón, for the Oscar-winning film Gravity. After his work on two shorts, Cuarón also co-wrote and helmed the production for his tense thriller Desierto in 2015, starring Werewolf by Night‘s Gael García Bernal and The Walking Dead‘s Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
El Muerto is currently set for a theatrical premiere on January 12, 2024. Check out Collider’s interview with the stars of Spider-Man: No Way Home below:
