The Latino community has long awaited a feature film like Blue Beetle. This film will be the first studio film with a Latino superhero in the lead. And that Latino is Xolo Maridueña, who audiences already love in Netflix’s it series Cobra Kai.

It’s a big tall order for Maridueña to carry the hopes of the Latino community on his shoulders. But he has been working all his life for an opportunity to represent and is up to the task. Xolo Maridueña is a native of Los Angeles. He started acting professionally in 2011. His natural talent quickly lead to dozens of roles within his first year. Those included several television commercials, a recurring role on Parenthood which soon turned into a series regular role. His other credits include Showtime’s Twin Peaks, and the TV drama Major Crimes. However, Maridueña is most known as Miguel in the Netflix original series, Cobra Kai, the continuation of the Karate Kid franchise.

Warner Bros. Pictures is also betting on this film and Maridueña. This could be the film that will finally solidify, not only the marketability of a Latino in a Superhero lead role, but also prove the power of the #1 film going audience in the U.S. — Latinos. The film, directed by Angel Manuel Soto, also stars a cast of well known Latino/a talent, an Academy Award nominee and a Oscar winning actress.

Blue Beetle marks the DC Super Hero’s first time on the big screen as well as Maridueña’s first film role. The Blue Beetle superhero first made an appearance in 1939, and is one of the oldest DC characters. Lending in Latino perspective to the Warner Bros. film is Mexican screenwriter Gareth Dunnet-Alcocer, best known for Contrapelo and Miss Bala.

Maridueña plays Jaime Reyes who returns home from college with major plans for his life, but as it usually happens, life has a different plan. As he searches to find his purpose in the world, fate intervenes when Jaime unexpectedly finds himself in possession of an ancient relic of alien biotechnology: The Scarab. When the Scarab suddenly chooses Jaime to be its symbiotic host, he is bestowed with an incredible suit of armor capable of extraordinary and unpredictable powers, forever changing his destiny as he becomes the Blue Beetle.

Soto has brought together a dreamcast to tell the story. From millennials to Academy Award nominated actors, to television superstars, which lends itself for more of a wide audience appeal.

Starring alongside Maridueña are Academy Award nominee Adriana Barraza (Rambo: Last Blood, Thor) as Jaime’s Nana, Damían Alcázar (Narcos, Narcos: Mexico) as his father, Elpidia Carrillo (Mayans M.C., the Predator) as his mother, George Lopez (Lopez Vs. Lopez, Rio and Smurf franchises) as Jaime’s Uncle Rudy, Raoul Max Trujillo (the Sicario films, Mayans M.C.) as Carapax, Bruna Marquezine (Maldivas, God Save the King) as Jenny Kord, with Oscar winner Susan Sarandon (Monarch, Dead Man Walking) as Victoria Kord. The film also stars Gen-z’er Belissa Escobedo (American Horror Stories, Hocus Pocus 2) as Jaime’s sister, Milagro, and millennial Harvey Guillén (What We Do in the Shadows) as Dr. Sanchez.

Director Soto hails from Puerto Rico, and is an avid traveler of the world. He first studied architecture and advertising but soon found his love for film. Having directed several short films, his long form films include Charm City Kings which received critical and a Grand Jury Nomination at Sundance, and his 2018 film The Farm took the Raindance Film Festival Immersive Stories Award. Blue Beetle will be his first studio film.

John Rickard and Zev Foreman are producing, with Walter Hamada, Galen Vaisman and Garrett Grant serving as executive producers.

The creative team behind the scenes includes director of photography Pawel Pogorzelski (Midsommar, Hereditary), production designer John Billington (Bad Boys for Life), editor Craig Alpert (Deadpool 2, The Lost City), Oscar-nominated costume designer Mayes C. Rubeo (Jojo Rabbit, the Thor films), visual effects supervisor Kelvin McIlwain (The Suicide Squad, Aquaman) and composer Bobby Krlic (Midsommar, the Snowpiercer series).

A Warner Bros. Pictures Presentation, a Safran Company Production, Blue Beetle will premiere in theaters only internationally beginning August 2023 and in North America August 18, 2023. It will be distributed worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures.

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Bad Bunny born, Benito Antonio Martínez Onasio has a small, but memorable role in the early scenes of Bullet Train. He plays Wolf, a vengeful, menacing assassin hell-bent on getting his howling revenge for the murder of his bride, Mrs. Wolfe, played by Andrea Muñoz (Hold Me Together) who gets killed — and way too little on-screen time, along with everybody in the wedding party.

Columbia’s Bullet Train offers up a huge serving of high-speed, sprawling, chaotic, rock‘n, sock‘em, claustrophobic, action-adventure express ride on the Japanese railways with a generous dollop of comedy. It stars Brad Pitt, who had his action-adventure creds stamped and certified long ago in such films as, Fight Club, Troy, Ad Astra and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Pitt’s character, Ladybug, thinks he’s on an easy “snatch and grab” caper to recover a valuable brass briefcase. But when he boards the fast-moving train, he discovers to his shock and awe there are five assassins who also for various completely undisclosed motives and agendas, also want the same brass briefcase and during the movie they find they all have something in common.

The comedic elements in Bullet Train add a perverse playful touch to the non-stop action and gives what would otherwise be a trainload of irredeemable bad guys, a much welcome patina of humanity. Bullet Train also marks the film debut of Puerto Rican reggaeton superstar, Bad Bunny as one of the bad guys.

Wolf hops on the train and mistakenly thinks Ladybug is his wife’s killer. A fight ensues and Wolf meets a sudden departure from the film. Although Bad bunny, as Wolf, is defanged all too early in the story, his appearance serves its purpose as a teasing cinematic appetizer for the big screen main course he will be presenting in an upcoming Marvel Universe comic book superhero film, El Muerto.

The screenplay by Zak Oklewicz (The Last Voyage of the Demeter), treats us to some very colorful villains with engaging personalities almost as complicated as the plot itself. One especially amusing pair of killers, Tangerine, and Lemon are called “The Twins:’. Tangerine, played by Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Kick ass, Nowhere Boy) and his “twin” (although they look nothing alike) Lemon, played by Brian Tyree-Henry (Widows, Hotel Artemis) provide much of the humor in Bullet Train with their bickering, profanity-laced Abbott & Costello like routine. Meanwhile, the lovely Joey King (The Conjuring, The Kissing Booth) as the lethal and dangerous, Prince, treacherously lends her venomous (figuratively and literally) deceptive femme fatale charms to the deadly proceedings.

Despite all the mayhem, violence and turbulence occurring primarily in the confines of a train, director David Leitch (Deadpool 2, Atomic Blonde, John wick) manages to unwind and reveal the complicated, interconnected storyline at a constant pace equal to the speeding train it is happening on.  Director Leitch ties up all intersecting plots with a tumultuous, explosive, screeching, karmic, train derailing end that leaves the audience breathless and forever wary of ever getting on a bullet train in Japan.

From Bullet Train Dead to El Muerto

Bullet Train was just a teaser for Bad Bunny’s budding movie career. Bunny has been cast to play El Muerto, the first Latino superhero role in the Marvel Universe film. A muscle-bound, spandex leotard-clad superhero known as Juan–Carlos Estrada Sánchez in the comic books. El Muerto is a luchador who inherits his powers from his Mexican-inspired Lucha Libre mask, which gives him superhuman strength. In the comics, El Muerto has gotten into the ring with Spider-Man himself.

Bad Bunny accepts the challenge with his customary soft-spoken confidence. “I’m very excited, happy, and proud,” he says.  “I think people are gonna be proud about my work.” No worries there. He will doubtless bring the same energy and talent to the role of El Muerto that he does to his insanely popular music. He will take his well-deserved place in the profitable repertory cast of Marvel Universe superheroes with the joyous ringing sound of ca-ching, ca-ching- ca-ching at the box office registers set to the pulsating Latino beat Bad Bunny’s “Me Porto Bonito” hit reggaeton tune.

Bullet Train is currently screening in theaters and Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime Video

Release date for El Muerto is set for Jan 2024.

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