Sony Cancels Spider-Man Spinoff With Bad Bunny
El Muerto, a Spider-Man spin-off starring Bad Bunny, has been quielty canceled by Sony.
Just as Spidey fans are coming down from the high that came from seeing Sony’s Across The Spider-Verse, the highly anticipated Spider-Man spinoff, El Muerto, starring Bad Bunny, has hit a roadblock. According to Variety, the film no longer has a release date, leaving fans wondering when they’ll get their dose of masked mayhem or if it will ever happen.
Originally slated for a thrilling debut on January 12, 2024, El Muerto has mysteriously vanished from Sony’s release calendar. This doesn’t mean El Muerto featuring Bad Bunny isn’t going to happen, but it isn’t good news for anticipating fans.
Like all the major studios, Sony has been making some strategic moves lately, and Bad Bunny’s El Muerto isn’t the only film to be affected. The studio has also shuffled the dates for two other projects: Dumb Money and The Book of Clarence.
The former, inspired by the GameStop stock frenzy that had us all scratching our heads, will now grace the silver screen on September 22 instead of its previous October 20 slot. And the latter, a biblical epic led by the talented LaKeith Stanfield, has taken El Muerto‘s spot and will now debut in mid-January.
El Muerto is set within Sony’s Universe of Marvel Characters and was pegged to mark the studio’s first live-action superhero film featuring a Latino actor. Bad Bunny was cast to step into the spandex-clad shoes of Juan-Carlos Estrada Sanchez, a remarkable wrestler blessed with superhuman powers thanks to a mystical mask passed down through generations.
While it remains unclear if our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man will swing by for a cameo once Bad Bunny’s film is finally released, die-hard fans will recall that El Muerto once crossed paths with the web-slinger in the pages of Marvel Comics. In a twist of fate, the two eventually joined forces, but only time will tell if this will also happen on the silver screen.
When the news of El Muerto first broke at CinemaCon in 2022, Bad Bunny himself couldn’t contain his excitement. “To bring El Muerto to life is just incredible… so exciting,” he gushed to the mesmerized audience. Let’s hope that this still happens and that Sony is only postponing the release date, not sending the film to the graveyard of canceled projects.
While Bad Bunny’s El Muerto faces a bit of uncertainty, Sony’s commitment to expanding its Spider-Man universe remains unwavering. So far, the studio has dabbled in Marvel character spinoffs with mixed success. For instance, Venom and its follow-up Let There Be Carnage swung in at a combined box office haul of $1.3 billion, but they failed to capture the hearts of critics and, honestly, of most audiences, too.
While the studio has yet to find major success with its live-action features, it has blown audiences and critics away with its animated Spider-Verse films following Miles Morales. In attempting to find the same critical success with its live-action features, Sony has a lineup of films coming to theaters soon, including Kraven the Hunter, featuring the talented Aaron Taylor-Johnson, on October 6, and then Madame Web, starring the captivating Dakota Johnson, on February 16, 2024.
Hopefully, this means that a Bad Bunny El Meurto is still on the horizon. Either way, while El Muerto’s fate is up in the air, there’s still a world of superheroes waiting to thrill us on the big screen, and hopefully, Sony will find their stride in the live-action world soon.
