The first Latino protagonist of a Marvel movie is “El Muerto.”
Jonás Cuarón (“Desierto”) is on board to direct Sony Pictures’ “El Muerto” starring Grammy Award-winner and mega recording artist Bad Bunny, also known as Benito A Martínez Ocasio, TheWrap has exclusively learned. In addition, the script, which is still in its early stages, is being written by Blue Beetle actor Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer.
“El Muerto” is the first Latino character to lead a Marvel film, and the antihero character is also known as Juan Carlos Estrada Sanchez, the son of a luchador who finds himself next in line to inherit the ancestral power of “El Muerto,” which is the powers and a mask worn by a super-powered wrestler.
El Muerto first appeared in a Spider-Man comic, where the luchador wrestler attended a J. Jonah Jameson-organized charity event in the hopes that Spider-Man would lose and be revealed in the ring by El Muerto.
“El Muerto” is a part of a line of Marvel-based movies Sony is producing, each with varied degrees of continuity with the main “Spider-Man” universe. JC Chandor’s “Kraven the Hunter,” starring Aaron Taylor Johnson, will be released in theatres on October 6, 2023, and SJ Clarkson’s “Madame Web,” starring Dakota Johnson and Sydney Sweeney, will be released on February 16, 2024, are the upcoming films in the Sony Pictures universe of Marvel characters. Madame Web is a psychic clairvoyant who has the capacity to see inside the spider universe. This is the account of her birth.
Recently, Bad Bunny made his scene-stealing film debut in the Sony Pictures release “Bullet Train,” directed by David Leitch and starring Brad Pitt.
On January 12, 2024, Sony Pictures will release “El Muerto” in theatres.
The son of director Alfonso Cuaron, who co-wrote and directed the immigration drama “Desierto,” starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Jeffrey Dean Morgan, is Jonás Cuaron. At the 2015 Toronto Film Festival, the movie took home the International Critics’ Award. Together with his father, he wrote “Gravity” as well.
Dunnet-Alcocer has become one of the town’s hottest go to writers for Latino projects and recently wrote the upcoming DC / Warner Bros movie “Blue Beetle,” for which he’s getting sole credit and which will be the first stand alone Latino superhero film, and the start of a new franchise.
He previously wrote “Let It Bleed” for Alfonso Gomez Rejon to direct with Ken Kao and Kevin Misher producing, as well as the remake of “Scarface” for Universal with Antoine Fuqua directing. For Sony, Dunnet-Alocer is most known for penning the English-language version of “Miss Bala.” The 2019 movie, which was directed by Catherine Hardwicke, gave him the only credit. He is collaborating on the TV project “Giant” for Amazon, which Anonymous is producing and Alfonso Gomez Rejon is helming.
UTA is the agent for Cuarón. Redefine Entertainment and WME are Alcocer’s agents.