Sony’s slate of Spider-Man villain spin-offs is looking a little emptier as the planned El Muerto solo film featuring Puerto Rican rapper, Bad Bunny, has disappeared from the company’s upcoming releases calendar.
The infamous luchador’s own movie was scheduled to release on January 12th next year, however, according to Sony, the release date is now to be determined. But what exactly does this mean for the film? Some have speculated that it may have been canceled, which wouldn’t be a surprise considering how much fans don’t really seem to care for it.
To be fair, that release date was tight considering how little ground had been made on the feature thus far. A delay to its release was an inevitability. However, for the handful of people who were actually excited for this movie, fret not; an insider with knowledge of the project spoke to IndieWire and confirmed that El Muerto is indeed still in development. The issue comes from external issues like the writers’ strike as well as rescheduling shoots etc. to work around Bad Bunny’s tour dates (although he currently doesn’t have any tour dates).
It feels like the world is against this movie right now, and maybe it actually is, while El Muerto might be a cool villain in the comics, Sony has fumbled their Spider-baddy films too many times now that fans just don’t want to hear about it. The assurance that this film is still in development sort of sounds more like a threat if anything. Another movie producer not involved with the film’s production also spoke with IndieWire regarding the delay, suggesting fans wait and see before jumping to conclusions.
“I wouldn’t necessarily write it off just because they changed the release date. […] But if your production is being delayed because of the writers strike, that’s delaying the window, and you’re losing Bad Bunny, I can easily see the thing where ‘We’re going to lose a month on this, and the way the schedule lines up, we need to lose six months or a year.’”
Sony is pretty set on shoving its latest attempt at capitalizing on the Spider-Man brand into theaters one way or another. At least the studio has made the wise decision to wait until the stars align and the writers’ strike is over because, let’s face it, judging by the plot synopsis, they’re going to need those writers to start from scratch.
So we can all hold off on our eulogies and funeral songs, El Muerto lives, at least until the film is released into cinemas and is inevitably ripped to shreds like we all know it will be.