Director Roman Coppola almost made a Doctor Strange movie back in 1992

Roman Coppola, son of the legendary Francis Ford Coppola, only has a couple of feature films under his belt as a director. His latest. A GLIMPSE INSIDE THE MIND OF CHARLES SWAN III, looks heavily influenced by the movies from his colleague Wes Anderson. But, did you know that there was a time when Coppola almost helmed a Marvel superhero movie?

In an interview with Movie Pilot, Coppola revealed he was working on a potential DOCTOR STRANGE movie back in the early 90s that ended up not working out. Here is an excerpt:

”You know, I did [have the desire to make a superhero movie], but I could again. I was a huge comic book fan comic book fan growing up, within reason. I was a fan of Spider-Man and all that stuff. Actually, I met Stan Lee 15 or 20 years ago when Marvel had the worst reputation for their adaptations. They had made a really terrible Fantastic Four movie and some other things. I met him with my dad and we said, ‘Oh, wow, I wish we could be involved. How great would it be to make a really accurate version of one of these films?’ I had the aspirations to make a Doctor Strange movie, which I worked on quite a bit. I ended up coming out on the other side, since I told someone I was working on a comic book movie and they said, ‘Do you really want to work for a studio to get pushed around for three years and not make something that’s personal?’ To make a movie like that where I could really use my sensibility would be fantastic. That type of work now is a product, and there’s a manner in which it’s made. Now I think it’d be better to spend those three years to do something better.”

So, his dad essentially told him not to do it. Who knows how the Marvel universe would have ended up if we had gotten DOCTOR STRANGE almost a decade before SPIDER-MAN and X-MEN. Coppola also shared that his pick for DOCTOR STRANGE if it were to get made today would be his cousin/GHOST RIDER, Nicolas Cage.

A BRIEF GLIMPSE INSIDE THE MIND OF CHARLES SWAN III opens in theaters on February 8th.