It's been several years since we were first introduced to Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), the Sorcerer Supreme of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but the good Doctor will soon be taking the lead in the first DOCTOR STRANGE sequel, which director Scott Derrickson has teased will be the first horror movie in the MCU. "When I came and talked to [Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige] about doing a sequel, I said, ‘I don’t want to do just another sequel. If I’m going to do it, it needs to go into the territory that drew me into the Doctor Strange comics in the first place’ – which is how they dipped into the gothic and the horror and the horrific," Derrickson said while speaking at San Diego Comic-Con this summer. "And we’re going to make the first scary MCU movie."
Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige recently appeared at the New York Film Academy, and talk soon turned to DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS, which Feige said is "the greatest title we've ever come up with." Feige also commented on how the sequel will be bringing horror to the MCU.
I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a horror film, but it is, as Scott Derrickson — our director — has pitched it, a big MCU film with scary sequences in it. When I was a kid in the ‘80s, Spielberg did an amazing job [doing that]. There are horrifying sequences in Raiders [of the Lost Ark] that I would, as a little kid, [cover my eyes] when their faces melted. Or Temple of Doom, of course, or Gremlins or Poltergeist. These are the movies that invented the PG-13 rating, by the way — they were PG and they were like, ‘We need another [rating].’ But that’s fun, it’s fun to be scared in that way and not a horrific, torturous way, but in a way that is legitimately scary because Scott Derrickson’s quite good at that. But scary in the service of an exhilarating emotion.
Feige also teased yesterday that DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS will feature the debut of a few Marvel characters new to the MCU. "You won't expect or won't guess who it is but we found a cool way to make it work because we want to make a particular type of movie there," Feige said. "And there was a character who we always wanted to do something with who will fit really well there." The DOCTOR STRANGE sequel will see the return of Benedict Cumberbatch, Rachel McAdams, and Benedict Wong, but Elizabeth Olsen will also star as Scarlet Witch/Wanda Maximoff as the events of the Disney+ series WandaVision are said to play into the film. DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS will hit theaters on May 1, 2021.