A new web in the Spider-Man movie universe will be spun by Bad Bunny.
The Puerto Rican superstar rapper-singer-actor, one of the most popular entertainers on the planet, is set to star in ‘El Muerto.’
The announcement was made by Sony Motion Pictures Group President Sanford Panitch during CinemaCon in Las Vegas, and immediately sent Latino Twitter buzzing. Bad Bunny would be the first Latino actor to lead a movie with a Marvel character. Most recently, over at Disney, Oscar Isaac became the first Latino actor to lead a Marvel Studios project with the debut of his ‘Moon Knight’ series, which began streaming on March.
The film will be the latest superhero movie from Sony that’s inspired by the Spider-Man comics, following two ‘Venom’ movies starring Tom Hardy and Jared Leto’s recent ‘Morbius’ vampire film.
El Conejo Malo has been a busy actor of late. He recently had a role in ‘Narcos’ on Netflix and will be seen fighting against Brad Pitt in David Leitch’s ‘Bullet Train’ in July. ‘El Muerto’ arrives in US theatres January 12, 2024.
The character El Muerto first appeared in the 2006 comic ‘Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man’ No. 6 by Peter David and Roger Cruz, where he challenged Spider-Man to a wrestling match. The masked luchador needed to win the match to satisfy a dark spirt that had haunted him and his father but that had also granted his superpowers. Longtime Spider-Man super-grump J. Jonah Jameson, the Daily Bugle head honcho, arranged the match.
In the comics, El Muerto’s masked look is based on lucha libre wrestling and the character is Mexican. No word on whether that origin will be tweaked with the biggest Puerto Rican superstar of a generation now playing him on the big screen, but Hollywood has a tendency to not care for such details of ancestral authenticity when it comes to Latino characters on film. But there is no bigger Latino star in any medium than Bad Bunny, who has been Spotify’s most streamed artist in the world the last two years, while performing exclusively in Spanish.
If Santo Benito wants to play your Mexican superhero on film, you don’t say no, and playing a Mexican icon did wonders for another Puerto Rican actor-musician: J-Lo (see ‘Selena’). So maybe lightning will strike twice.
Bad Bunny’s appearance in a movie as a superhero-wrestler should come as no surprise to his fans. The reggaetonero is a fan of both. At a concert of his in Puerto Rico in December, during a Benicio Del Toro-narrated video tribute dedicated to Puerto Rican icons, an animated Miles Morales/Spider-Man from ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ briefly appeared among some of the island’s greatest legends. Morales is half Puerto Rican (via his mother) in the comics and in the film. Bad Bunny has also appeared in a tag-team match at WWE’s biggest event, WrestleMania 37.
The chances of Spider-Man appearing in this film — as he did in the first comic book appearance of El Muerto — are slim to none. The wall-crawler has yet to appear in any of Sony’s villain films except for a small moment in ‘Venom: Let There Be Carnage’s’ post-credits scene, but with so many Spider-Men around in live-action after ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home,’ never say never.
