Doctor Strange 2 Release Date, Cast, Rumors and News
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is headed your way. Here's everything you need to know.
| | Doctor Strange raked in over $200 million during its domestic run, with a global total of over $675 million, so it shouldn’t have come as any surprise that Doctor Strange 2 eventually happened, but Marvel really took their time making the official announcement. Never fear, though, Benedict Cumberbatch is returning as Stephen Strange.
The green light was a mixed bag of news for the sequel, as original director Scott Derrickson, who did great work on the first film, dropped out of directing Doctor Strange 2 – which has the intriguingly pulpy (and awesome) title of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness – and none other than Spider-Man and Evil Dead director Sam Raimi took over helming it.
Meanwhile, Michael Waldron, the lead writer of Disney+’s upcoming Marvel series, Loki, was brought aboard to work on the script. THR, who broke the news, weren’t sure if Waldron would do a complete rewrite of the first screenplay or not, but we’re keeping an eye out for more information on the former Rick And Morty writer’s involvement.
Filming is reportedly now underway on Doctor Strange 2 in the U.K. at Longcross Studios, where Kenneth Branagh also worked on his latest big screen Agatha Christie adaptation, Death on the Nile.
Cumberbatch recently revealed his anxiety about the Doctor Strange 2 shoot via an interview with SCMP, after news arrived that he’d joined Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man 3 as Strange, too.
“There’s a little voice going, ‘But what if it all goes wrong again? What if [COVID-19] case numbers rise?’”
Check out everything else you need to know:
Doctor Strange 2 Release Date
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was scheduled to hit theaters on May 7, 2021. Due to the coronavirus pandemic, it has now shifted to a March 25, 2022 release date.
Doctor Strange 2 Cast
Benedict Cumberbatch will return as Stephen Strange, as will Benedict Wong as Wong. We’ll see more of Chiwetel Ejiofor’s compelling Mordo, as well.
Ejiofor says he’s looking forward to working with Raimi on the sequel.
“He’s coming on. I’m very, very excited about that,” said the actor, also confirming his own involvement in the film. “Obviously, we’ve been sort of interrupted as the whole world has been in the pandemic but hopefully we are back on track with that and continuing quite soon, so I’m very excited about it.”
Elizabeth Olsen, aka Scarlet Witch, will also be joining Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, which backs up the reports that the Vision and Scarlet Witch focused Disney+ series, WandaVision, will play an integral role in setting up Doctor Strange 2.
Xochitl Gomez (of Netflix’s Babysitter’s Club) is also in the cast, POSSIBLY (big possibly) as America Chavez. If you haven’t got a clue who that is, no worries, we’ve got you covered.
Doctor Strange 2 Story
Jade Bartlett first worked on the script for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, according to Collider. Bartlett, an up-and-coming screenwriter, made waves with her script for Miller’s Girl, which, back in 2016, was voted as the best unproduced script on Hollywood’s Black List – since then optioned by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg‘s Point Grey shingle.
Production Weekly had a brief synopsis about what we can expect from the story:
“After the events of Avengers: Endgame, Dr. Stephen Strange continues his research on the Time Stone. But an old friend turned enemy seeks to destroy every sorcerer on Earth, messing with Strange’s plan and also causing him to unleash an unspeakable evil.”
That “old friend turned enemy” is more than likely to be Mordo, continuing his nefarious plans briefly glimpsed in one of the first movie’s post-credits scenes.
Prior to Derrickson’s departure, and due to Marvel’s silence following it, fans presumed that the director and his original co-writer C. Robert Cargill did, at some point, have some substantial influence on the script for the sequel, but Cargill has now revealed that this is simply not true. Neither he nor Derrickson “had the opportunity” to work on it at all.
Doctor Strange 2 Villain
Before he stepped off the project, ex-director Derrickson made no secret of the villain he’d like to see emerge in Doctor Strange 2. “I really like the character of Nightmare and the concept [of] the Nightmare Realm” he told IGN. “That’s early – that’s like the first Strange tale. I think that’s in the introductory episode of Doctor Strange, and I always loved that.”
Certainly we’ll get another encounter with Dormammu, as well, right?
Doctor Strange 2 Characters
Original screenwriter Jon Spaihts first hinted we might finally get to meet Clea on the screen in Doctor Strange 2. There’s a catch, though.
“She’s a tricky character to interpret because her uncle is a kind of fire-headed omnipotent god and she’s kind of a hot babe who studies magic,” Mr. Spaihts told CBR. “That’s a tricky relationship to bring out of a comic book and on to a movie screen. But she’s a really compelling character as a foil, a love interest, a colleague of Doctor Strange’s, and she always carries with her that width of mystery as to whether she is human, and how human, and what that means for his relationship to her. So we might find a way to introduce her to the story.”
Well, that kind of explains why we didn’t see her already. We have our own list of characters we’d like to see show up in the sequel, as well, but regardless, Clea is overdue for her closeup.
Other rumored character inclusions include Jericho Drumm, Brother Voodoo!
Doctor Strange 2 Trailer
Well, the movie has only just started filming, so you’ll need to chill. We’ll update this as soon as there’s any official confirmation one way or the other.