El Muerto (2024 Film)

About

El Muerto is a Marvel movie set to release in early 2024 about a Spider-Man villain named "El Muerto" who is a wrestler of Mexican descent. Sony announced the movie in early 2022, as well as its lead actor, Puerto Rican rapper and singer Bad Bunny. The announcement inspired a viral discussion on Twitter, mostly from users confused about who El Muerto was and if he deserved his own spin-off film. Similar to 2022's Morbius, El Muerto also inspired memes about a potential sweep at the box office.

Background

El Muerto made his Marvel debut on May 8th, 2019, within the Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man #6 comic,^[1] written by Tom Taylor. The character's real name is Juan-Carlos Estrada Sanchez and he is part of a long line of Mexican wrestlers named El Muerto.^[2] The mask that Sanchez wears gives him the power of El Muerto, however, Sanchez never wanted the power. His ultimate task in the comic is to unmask a masked hero, that being Spider-Man. El Muerto was also briefly mentioned in Marvel's Civil War by Tony Stark as "an unregistered foreign national who should be monitored further."^[2]

Announcement

On April 25th, 2022, Sony announced the Spider-man spin-off movie El Muerto, naming a theater release date of January 12, 2024.^[3] Additionally, they announced that Latin musician and singer Bad Bunny would be the lead of the film. In 2020, Bad Bunny was Spotify's most-streamed artist.^[3] A tweet^[4] from IGN posted on April 25th, 2022, earned roughly 30,500 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below).

Reactions

A common reaction to the movie's announcement in late April 2022 was Marvel fans on Twitter not understanding why such a minor character would get its own spin-off. For instance, on April 25th, 2022, Twitter^[5] user RawbertBeef tweeted about the "'nobody asked for this' argument," stating that they're not one to fall into that, however, "He's been in two comics. Two. Two issues." The tweet received roughly 14,600 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below left). On April 26th, 2022, Twitter^[6] user 05_Cyan tweeted a similar sentiment, stating, "I can name villains most people can't, and even I don't know who the fuck El Muerto is, and I'm Mexican." The tweet earned roughly 12,300 likes in less than 24 hours (shown below, right).

On April 25th, 2022, Twitter^[7] user JCVsEvil related the El Muerto announcement to the Morbius (2022) film. The imagined Sony executives in the tweet state, "'Morbius was a failure. It’s time we stop fucking around and unveil EL MUERTO.'” Over the course of six hours, the tweet received roughly 68,500 likes (shown below).

Overall, El Muerto wasn't met with visible positivity online. Most users and Marvel fans believed other characters like Bane, Venom or Mile Morales deserved a movie over El Muerto.

Various Reactions

Search Interest

External References