Spider-Man Spinoff El Muerto Loses Its Release Date
Seems like El Muerto is... well, muerto. The Spider-Man spinoff film has lost its release date in the most recent movie schedule changes that are now coming out of Sony. While two other films on the list (comedy biopic Dumb Money and Jeymes Samuel's The Book of Clarence) got official new release dates, El Muerto's release date has been revised to "TBD."
RELEASE DATE MOVED
- Dumb Money (Columbia Pictures) – September 22, 2023 (from October 20, 2023)
- The Book of Clarence (Legendary Pictures) – January 12, 2024 (from September 22, 2023)
- El Muerto (Columbia Pictures) – TBD Date (from January 12, 2024)
There were murmurs back in the spring that El Muerto was at a "standstill" (according to Bad Bunny's publicist). There had been an obvious cooling effect taking place: El Muerto was not only greenlit but fast-tracked in the spring of 2022, after Bad Bunny thrilled audiences in Sony's action flick Bullet Train. As you can see above, El Muerto was supposed to shoot, wrap, and get through post-production by January 2024. Since we're now at summer 2023 and cameras haven't even begun rolling yet, with the WGA Strike only growing stronger by the day (and possibly soon including actors too), it's pretty clear this movie was another attempt by Sony that ultimately didn't pan out.
Whether or not El Muerto gets revisited later is anyone's guess. It was always a strange project to have on the slate, but Bad Bunny is a major star as a musician, an actor, and even a WWE wrestler.
What Is El Muerto?
El Muerto is probably one of the most obscure Marvel characters to get a film built around him. The lore is built around the wrestling god el Dorado, who gave a family (the Estradas) the mystical mask of El Muerto, which bestowed a fighter from each generation of the family with superhuman strength and endurance – at the price of having to fight el Dorado for the right to keep the mask.
Juan-Carlos Estrada Sánchez was trained all his life to get ready to inherit the mask of El Muerto; however when the day of his battle with el Dorado came, fear made Juan-Carlos falter, and his father Marcus sacrificed himself to el Dorado to save his son. The wrestling god gave the mask to Juan-Carlos out of respect for his father, with a ticking clock of ten years to train himself, and the obligation of battling and unmasking a rival masked champion (Spider-Man).
El Muerto has no release date.
