Earlier this week, Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige said that the studio is looking to do a Doctor Strange movie, possibly including it in their 2012 or 2013 film slate.
When writer Neil Gaiman spoke to MTV earlier this month, he said that he and director Guillermo del Toro had talked about doing a film based on Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme, but with del Toro’s busy schedule (especially his making the two Hobbit films), he thought it would be several years before they could turn to it.
The subject of a Doctor Strange movie came up again when Gaiman recently spoke with Premiere.
I would love to write Dr. Strange. It would be absolutely one of my dream jobs [to write] a Dr. Strange movie. Last year I was out in Budapest for three weeks on the set of Hellboy II with Guillermo, and I mentioned to him that I’ve been, in very very early sort of “I would to do this” talks with Marvel about doing a Dr. Strange movie, and Guillermo’s reaction was, “Neil, I want to direct it!”
Gaiman also said he wasn’t sure that he would do the project without del Toro.
If Gaiman does get to write this, it wouldn’t be the first time he’s tackled a Doctor Strange storyline. Strange was one of the characters in another Marvel property being considered for a big-screen adaptation — Gaiman’s 2003 comic book series 1602 (which Incredible Hulk director Louis Leterrier recently expressed interest in). In this 8-issue series, the superheroes of the Marvel universe are transported to Elizabethan times where Strange is then the physician of England’s Queen Elizabeth I.
Strange also made the jump to the small screen last year with the direct-to-DVD animated movie Doctor Strange: The Sorcerer Supreme, a retelling of the Strange original tale.
If you’re wondering what kind of Doctor Strange movie a Gaiman/del Toro team-up would conjure, just check out what del Toro told Empire about it back in February.
“I talked with Neil Gaiman [about writing it],” he tells us. “I said, that’s an interesting character because you can definitely make him more in the pulpy occult detective/magician mould and formula than was done in the Weird Tales, for example…the idea of a character that really dabbles in the occult in a way that’s not X-Filey, where the supernatural is taken for granted. That’s interesting…But I wouldn’t use the suit!”
I’m not certain Del Toro is the right director for this property. His initial suggestion for what he would do sounds very trite. Besides, I really did not like Hellboy 2 – it seemed paper-thin and haphazard.
Neil Gaiman should pair up with Jose Cuaron to do the Doctor Strange Movie
Comment by Jolene — October 26, 2008 @ 8:57 pm
I agree Del Toro is not as great as we want him to be, Hellboy 2 was a big disapointment, to far out there, Hellboy always brought a realistic sense to the wildly unreal. Thats why it worked in the comics and the first film. If your going to do Doctor Strange then do Doctor Strange. Full Moons Doctor Morbid was a prime example of how to do it right.
Comment by korollocke — October 27, 2008 @ 12:06 am