The future of Spider-Man spin-off El Muerto isn’t looking so good. According to The Hollywood Reporter’s Borys Kit, the Marvel movie starring Bad Bunny has been taken off Sony’s release date calendar.
He tweeted: "Item: EL MUERTO, Sony’s Spider-Man-themed Marvel movie that is supposed to Star Bad Bunny, has been taken off the release calendar. It had been scheduled for a Jan. 12, 2024 release."
While there hasn’t been a lot of news on the project’s development since its announcement in April 2022, this is slightly surprising as things had started to look more positive. According to Production Weekly (H/T Collider), the movie was set to begin filming in August this year. It’s not clear at the moment if this is still the case and it’s just been delayed or if the film is no longer moving forward at Sony.
El Muerto wasn’t exactly welcomed with open arms when it was first announced back at CinemaCon last year. Known as Juan-Carlos Estrada Sanchez, the character is a wrestler whose powers come from a special mask passed down to him. However, it's fair to say he has a very obscure comic book history, having only appeared briefly in the source material.
Item: EL MUERTO, Sony’s Spider-Man-themed Marvel movie that is supposed to Star Bad Bunny, has been taken off the release calendar. It had been scheduled for a Jan. 12, 2024 release.June 21, 2023
This led many people to question why Sony was making him a subject of a new movie. "This is no disrespect to Bad Bunny – who must be as good in Bullet Train as ATJ who got Kraven off the same movie," wrote movie commentator Grace Randolph on Twitter. "This is an pretty much completely unknown Spider-Man character getting their own movie yet again."
Others agreed, including presenter Matt Ramos, who tweeted: "I genuinely don’t know who’s making these creative decisions at Sony. Like with all the amazing alternate versions of Spider-Man we could be getting animated or live-action spinoff’s for how are we getting an 'El Muerto' movie?"
Per Variety, Sony’s removal of the release date also came as the studio shifted some other dates. Dumb Money moved from October 20 to September 22 and The Book of Clarence has taken El Muerto’s January slot.
In the meantime, several Spider-Man spin-offs are still on the way, including Kraven the Hunter on October 6 and Madame Web on February 16, 2024. Check out what other new superhero movies are planned through that link.
