Tag: Doctor Strange

‘Multiverse of Madness’ Writer Says Illuminati Inclusion Was Not “Fan Service”

Even by Marvel Studios standards, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was a film marked by secrecy up until its release. The multiversal nature of the movie led to plenty of rumors and speculations ahead of the release. Many fans expected or hoped for a large number of cameos from various Marvel properties that did not actually happen. Since the film’s release, fans have debated whether or not the lack of some “fan service” that many expected was helpful or detrimental to the Doctor Strange sequel.

Multiverse of Madness writer Michael Waldron has weighed in on the discussion. In an interview with ComicBook.com, Waldron was asked whether there was pressure to include that type of “fan service” in the film. The writer said there was some pressure but that the movie’s creators were never interested in the “cheap cheer”:

It’s easy to be seduced by the cheap laugh, the cheap cheer, whatever. But that’s never what Marvel or Sam [Raimi] were interested in. It was always about what’s right for the story, what’s right for Steven Strange, what’s right for Wanda. It was never about fan service, really. It was like, ‘If these Illuminati characters are here, they should be here because that’s who’s in the Illuminati in the comics, and that’s who would actually be in the Illuminati.’ That was our north star.
Michael Waldron

In Multiverse of Madness, the Illuminati and the overall sequence that involved them were one of the most memorable (and cheer-inducing) moments of the film. The group contained several exciting characters for fans. Hayley Atwell’s Captain Carter, Lashana Lynch’s Captain Marvel, Patrick Stewart’s Charles Xavier, John Krasinski’s Reed Richards, and Anson Mount’s Black Bolt joined Chiwetel Ejiofor’s variant Baron Mordo to form the now-violently-deceased organization. As many noticed, though, their roles were significantly greater than cameos. Waldron seems to confirm the importance of the Illuminati to the story of the Doctor Strange sequel instead of merely fan service to excite MCU and Marvel comics fans.

Audiences can judge the Illuminati themselves as Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now playing in theaters worldwide.

Source: Comicbook.com

May 13, 2022
‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ Officially Passes $550M in Box Office Revenue

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness continues to be the king of the box office in passing $550 million in global revenue in its first nine days. This includes the additional $19.2 million added yesterday globally. The only film this week that has put at least a partial dent in terms of revenue was Universal’s remake of the Stephen King novel Firestarter, which raked in $375,000 in its Thursday previews yesterday.

Sam Raimi’s return to the superhero genre debuted last weekend to a dominating $185 million globally, and officially became the 11th highest domestic opening of all-time. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has already become the strongest launch of 2022 thus far and is the second biggest opening since the pandemic, only behind the most previous entry of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Spider-Man: No Way Home.

Some within the industry had questions about the long-term sustainability of this film at the box office, mainly due to the horror elements and how deeply entrenched it is in the lore of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Though with it remaining one of the only marquee releases currently, the Benedict Cumberbatch-led sequel has proven any potential doubters wrong with the massive financial success through just over a week. The big questions moving forward will be how long Doctor Strange 2 will hold as the king of the box office.

There doesn’t appear to be any major blockbusters standing in its way until May 27 with the release of Top Gun: Maverick, followed by Jurassic World Dominion on June 10. With that in mind, one can expect to see Doctor Strange in the Multiverse continue to dominate the box office for the time being on its road to potentially $1 billion globally and being the most financially successful film of the year overall.

Source: Variety

May 13, 2022
EXCLUSIVE: ‘Doctor Strange 2’ Writer on Sam Raimi’s Influence on the Script

The one thing reviews seem to agree on is that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is that it is definitely a Sam Raimi film. Yet, the director has often spoken of the collaborative effort that is working with Marvel Studios, especially on bringing the script to life together with Loki writer Michael Waldron. In an exclusive interview with Murphys Multiverse, he talked about how that creative process was and just how much input Raimi had on the film’s script.

We were just sharing a brain, it felt like by the end of it because we worked so closely through such a weird, challenging time. And I was always trying to write through the lens of this being a Sam Raimi film. When I wrote Dead Strange and Strange possessing his own corpse, it looked exactly what I hoped it would look, in a Sam-type way.
Michael Waldron

It definitely seems like he had a big part in writing the script while Waldron tried to stay true to how he would generally tackle a project. You can see many dialogue choices felt quite at home in a film he would direct, some even paying homage to his time with Spider-Man, Evil Dead, and so many more. It also turns out that the Deadites-inspired Demonic Souls that are turned into Dead Strange’s cape in the finale were the director’s idea.

The demonic souls, that was all Sam’s idea […] that was Sam pitching that back to me and saying: ‘Could we do this?’ and we building some logical scaffolding to make this really cool thing he wanted to do. That. was a great example of how we both worked to realize one another’s ideas. Ultimately, because it is Sam Raimi and he’s one of the greatest directors to ever do it, I just felt so confident, I felt like I could write anything because he would make it look amazing.
Michael Waldron

That moment definitely felt like a creative decision by him, and it’s great how Waldron highlights their collaborative effort pushed the boundaries of how these ideas came together. He definitely added his unique visual style to the film and added a flair that hopefully, Marvel Studios will revisit, as the director has openly stated he would love to return for more in the future.

May 13, 2022
EXCLUSIVE: ‘Doctor Strange 2’s Michael Waldron on the “Symbiotic Nature” of Movies and Scoop Culture

We’ve entered a new era filled to the brim with leaks and spoilers hitting the web ahead of any project’s official release. Marvel Studios’ films and Disney+ shows are seemingly hit extremely often, as entire screenshots find their way online right before a film releases. Many sites also dabble in the world of running scoops on whatever the new hottest commodity is in the latest entry.

In an interview with Murphy’s Multiverse, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness writer Michael Waldron has shared his thoughts on this new “scoop culture” and what it also means for those surfing the web looking to find out what their most-anticipated project might be working on behind the scenes and how Marvel Studios’ famed secrecy has created a very interesting internet culture.

I like the idea it can mythologize otherwise. I have so much respect for what you do, for what everybody, all the fan sites do, because that was the shit that I grew up reading. I’m such a child of Coming Attractions by Corona, Ain’t It Cool News. That stuff is probably a big reason why I’m a writer. The scoop culture, to some extent, I’m like great, that’s part of it. I think that it’s our job…we want to preserve these secrets because it just makes a better experience in the theater for the audience. You’re going to get a better POP from the audience if they don’t know what’s coming.
Michael Waldron

Though he also highlights one aspect that is commonly forgotten on the web, and that is most cinema-goers have no idea about the many spoilers hitting the web. As he points out, those that actively search for it are the ones to get it spoiled the most, especially when stories are dropped

But I think it’s also…you can really if you spend a lot of time online, you can come to think that if something is spoiled on a corner of the internet that suddenly the whole world knows. But they don’t. It’s the people who are actively seeking that out and who want to find that stuff. And if they want to find it out, that means it’s probably going to enhance their enjoyment of the movie.
Michael Waldron

He also highlights that his biggest concern is if this kind of news hits bigger outlets that would spoil it for the general audience that typically isn’t on the Internet frequently and only finds out through official trailers if they include any references.

And the people who don’t wanna find out, probably aren’t. It’s like, I would be mad if it headlines news on CNN about who was in the Illuminati, but it’s not. There’s [a] spoiler warning and you know where you’re going if you go to a spoiler website. It’s like it’s what we do. It’s like the symbiotic nature of this stuff and it just builds anticipation and excitement. I think it’s cool.
Michael Waldron

It’s definitely great to get some insight into the perspective of the modern scoop culture from the perspective of someone working on these projects. As he highlights, the internet is a very different beast and there is certain anticipation if storylines or elements are teased early on.

May 13, 2022
EXCLUSIVE: Michael Waldron on Making The Illuminati Interesting in ‘Multiverse of Madness’

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness delivered what’s probably the most talked-about second act in the history of the MCU. As Doctor Strange and America Chavez went on their crazy multiversal journey, they found themselves prisoners of a team of power players from Earth-838 known as the Illuminati.

Marvel Studios has been rumored to be looking into developing a project around the Illuminati, which were created by Brian Michael Bendis in 2005, and that may still happen, but the Strange sequel introduced fans to them and then proceeded to have them systematically slaughtered by the Scarlet Witch.

Multiverse of Madness is a very different movie from the one that Marvel Studios set out to make when it was announced that Scott Derrickson, who directed 2016’s Doctor Strange, was returning to helm the sequel. When Derrickson and Marvel Studios amicably parted way, Kevin Feige turned to Loki head writer Michael Waldron to begin work on a new script. Waldron was quickly joined by Sam Raimi and the two embarked on a creative journey that was full of COVID delays and some much-discussed reshoots and additional photography. With so much time for the film to grow and evolve, I was curious if the Illuminati were always a part of the pitch, or if they were added later on. Here’s what Waldron had to say:

That came in the very first draft when we started over from scratch, what became the movie, they were in the first draft of that. They weren’t even in the outline, I think as I said. It was just me sitting in my living room…me feeling bored by my own second act.
Michael Waldron

Waldron went on to explain how his time on Rick and Morty helped shape the second act, which he described as where the movie “gets drunk”:

In Rick and Morty, Mike McMahon created Star Trek: Lower Decks, Solar Opposites…he was the showrunner on the season I wrote for. He coined a term, the “duck bill”, where it’s like the story circle, Dan Harmon’s story circle, but around like 7 or 8 o’clock on that story circle, we always try to do a duck bill, where it’s like the story doesn’t just proceed linearly or in a regular curvature way, it actually duck bills out and it’s like the movie gets drunk and that’s what it felt like we needed at that point and somehow it stayed in there the whole way. It’s a testament to Kevin, who got behind the idea and thought it would be cool, and Sam and our DP John Matheson and our editors.
Michael Waldron

For Waldron and Raimi, the second act couldn’t just be a cameo fest where some of Marvel’s most powerful characters came together to wave at the camera. So the creative team went to work:

It is ultimately a guy standing opposite several stationary characters. It takes a master of the camera like Sam to make that visually dynamic. Sam was always like, “I know the audience is gonna be excited to see these people but it can’t just be boring exposition. We’ve gotta figure out a way to make it visually dynamic.” And so they pushed me and we all pushed each other to make sure the scene was there for a reason.
Michael Waldron

With so much time between the first draft and the last day of additional photography, it was reasonable to assume that the final team, composed of Reed Richards, Black Bolt, Captain Carter, Captain Marvel, Mordo, and Charles Xavier, might not have been the original “dream team” pitched by Waldron. In fact, there were all kinds of wild rumors about who might be on the team with anyone from Balder to Magneto rumored at one time or another. When asked specifically about those two, Waldron gave a careful response, saying “There were lots of names discussed is all I’ll say.” Maybe those characters and more will show up down the road in another universe’s Illuminati.

May 13, 2022
‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ Musical Battle Was Created in Reshoots

Reshoots is a dirty word among fans in this business. The general consensus is that when reshoots occur during a big-budget production, it’s a sign that everything is a total mess behind-the-scenes and fires need to be put out. While that is the case in certain situations, most of the time it’s a standard byproduct of the production pipeline. Oftentimes, it’s when a lot of unexpected magic happens as filmmakers have a better perspective of their movie now that they’ve seen it on the cutting room floor.

Case in point, the reshoots of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness birthed the astounding musical fight scene between two Stranges fighting for the Darkhold. Fandom.com spoke with Danny Elfman who revealed that the scene was conceptualized during reshoots:

Whereas the musical battle was very late in the game, and Sam was returning to England to shoot a second time. He says, ‘I’ve got this idea,’ and he’s describing it to me. And I said, ‘Sam, I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.’ And he’s like, ‘Don’t worry, don’t worry, you’ll see it, you’ll see.’
Danny Elfman

That particular showdown is undeniably one of the most exciting fight sequences the MCU has ever had. It’s a fight scene that harkens back to the fantastical days of Disney in Fantasia as well as the audacious mindbending journeys of Doctor Strange in the Silver Age. It’s also surprising to learn that the idea wasn’t necessarily from Elfman but from director Sam Raimi himself. Regardless, the scene is a great encapsulation of Raimi’s creative relationship with Elfman, which goes back decades.

Source: Fandom

May 12, 2022
Danny Elfman on the Challenge of Creating Wanda’s Theme in ‘Doctor Strange 2’

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is a special kind of MCU film, as it not only brought back director Sam Raimi but also long-time composer Danny Elfman. While he helped out in the past, it was something special to see him take over for the Doctor Strange sequel. In an interview with Fandom, the composer talked about what it was like tackling the project and highlighted the difficulty of creating a villain theme for Wanda.

Writing for Wanda and her character, she’s the weirdest antagonist I’ve ever written for. When you think of a Marvel antagonist, you think of Thanos. When you think of a classic villain, you think of Darth Vader and you think of writing these big, heavy, dark themes that play their characters. You don’t think of a woman whose entire purpose is not to possess the universe but just to return to her children… who never quite really existed. It’s crazy! So it really was a writing challenge, because I have to write a theme that can be malevolent but also, I want it to feel heartbreaking at the same time. She’s a very unique character.
Danny Elfman

It certainly sounds like it was quite a challenge to find a balance between the evil and kindness that represents Wanda’s transformation into the Scarlet Witch. She creates a very different kind of villain, as while Winter Soldier was also a former ally, Wanda’s motivation is very much grounded with some evil magic adding that extra push off the ledge. Yet, her reasonings are technically from a good place, as she wants to be back with her children. The theme that Elfman ended up with perfectly brought both of those worlds together.

Source: Fandom

May 12, 2022
‘Fant4stic’ Writer Responds to John Krasinski as Reed Richards

It might be a while before people stop commenting on the biggest surprise cameo in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. When the titular Master of the Mystic Arts and his newest protégé, America Chavez, find themselves stuck on the alternate Earth-838, they are confronted by that world’s mightiest superhero team – The Illuminati. One of the leading members of that team is John Krasinski‘s Reed Richards, billed as the smartest man on Earth-838 and head of the Baxter Foundation.

The character reveal was a huge shock to audiences. Very few people expected to see the patriarch of the Fantastic Four back on the big screen so soon, let alone played by one of the most popular fan casts in comic book internet history. The last time Richards was in a movie, it was 2015’s Fant4stic, where a younger version of the hero was brought to life by Miles Teller. One of that film’s writers, Jeremy Slater, has now reacted to Reed’s inclusion in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Speaking with Comic Book, the creative revealed his enthusiasm for Krasinski in the role:

I think Krasinski is a really cool choice if that’s who they go with for whoever the real version of Reed that gets introduced. I think he’d be an awesome choice. We didn’t get to see him do a lot of fun stuff in there — [the Scarlet Witch vs. the Illuminati] was much more of an introduction and a sort of glorified cameo.
Jeremy Slater

Slater just finished a run writing Moon Knight for Marvel Studios. He’s received a lot of flack for his work on Fant4stic in the past, which was a critical and financial failure, but the writer has publicly stated he does not claim ownership for the movie. Supposedly, only a single line of dialogue Slater wrote made it into the final film.

Go see Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness in theaters now.

Source: Comic Book

May 12, 2022
‘Doctor Strange 2’ Writer Confirms Deadpool Was Never Planned to Appear

There has been a barrage of questions surrounding the many rumors of who and who wouldn’t appear in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Now that the film is out, those questions still haunt us and the creative team is getting bombarded with questions about who almost made it. Multiverse of Madness writer Michael Waldron did reveal that there were talks about potentially including Ryan Reynold‘s Deadpool but nothing more.

Yeah, we talked about it. I think we talked about everything in this movie. So, [it] would’ve been crazy to not raise that, but it ultimately didn’t feel like… It just didn’t feel the right place. But yeah, of course we talked about it.
Michael Waldron

They probably had a bunch of ideas and concepts that were discussed but nothing more. We’ve heard about quite a few, such as Namor almost being part of the Illuminati but there were others plans for him moving forward. Deadpool would’ve made for a fun addition, but it’s true that he may not have quite fit into the overall tone of the film, even if it would’ve been great to see him freak out over everyone dying around him.

The irony of the guy who can survive that kind of mutilation being hit the least would’ve made for a fun punchline, but perhaps that version of the film exists in another dimension. Many did notice what seemed like an Easter egg featuring the Merc with a Mouth in the film’s poster, but that could be something the marketing possibly just snuck in for fun.

Source: ComicBook.com

May 12, 2022
EXCLUSIVE: Earlier ‘Doctor Strange 2’ Drafts Included 616’s Mordo

Many of the trailers for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness teased the return of Chiwetel Ejiofor‘s Karl Mordo. While we finally got to hear his first name in live-action, the version we meet in the film is actually a member of the Illuminati and the Sorcerer Supreme of 838. 616’s Doctor Strange only mentions the version from his universe and their ongoing rivalry, but he is noticeably absent from the film.

In an interview with Michael Waldron, our very own Charles Murphy got to chance to ask if there were any plans to include the original version of the character. As it turns, out they had some versions that included his appearance but eventually decided to keep that story open to potentially revisit in the future. He goes on to say that:

Yeah, there was. And we talked about that history and what had happened. We explored ways that would be interesting to intertwine with this story, but ultimately it felt like that was a story left for another day. He’s out there, what happened between them we don’t know. But I am certain we’ll find out.
Michael Waldron

It’s great that they kept it open to further explore their relationship in the future. Even 838’s version of the character survived the encounter, and it would be fun to see him build a similar relationship with Strange only to go through the multiverse to hunt him down. That also leads to two versions of Mordo meeting up in their shared hatred of Strange, especially now that he once again dabbled in something he shouldn’t have and received the third eye as a result. Mordo’s not going to be happy about that one.

May 12, 2022