Source: Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty
Bad Bunny is the newest Marvel hero in Sony Pictures’ upcoming standalone comic book film El Muerto. The chart-topping rapper makes history as the first ever Latino actor to headline a live-action Marvel movie.
Benito Antonia Martínez Ocasio, better known by his stage name Bad Bunny, is taking on his first lead role in a major Marvel film. The news was announced at this year’s CinemaCon, which is the annual gathering for movie theater owners hosted in Las Vegas.
El Muerto is a wrestler, known as Juan-Carlos Estrada Sanchez in the comics, whose powers are handed down by ancestry in the form of a mask. Marvel’s official site suggests the mask gives him superhuman strength. In other comic narratives, El Muerto has wrestled with Spider-Man himself.
During CinemaCon, Sony motion Pictures group president Sanford Panitch was present to announce the upcoming film. Pantich suggested Ocasio will portray an antihero on the verge of inheriting his father’s power.
Bad Bunny seems to be eager for his upcoming role in the film.
“To bring El Muerto to life is just incredible,” the rapper shared with the crowd. “So exciting.” He also added that he grew up watching wrestling as a child.
Sony’s adaptive Marvel rights have yielded three Spider-Man iterations over 20 years, with the current Tom Holland-led series most recently reaching global box office success in Spider-Man: No Way Home. More franchises include Tom Hardy and Michelle Williams in Venom, Jared Leto’s Morbius and the Oscar-winning animated film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. A sequel to the latter was just pushed from a December 2022 release to June 2023.
Catch Bad Bunny in El Muerto in theaters on Jan. 12, 2024.