Why Marvel Shifted Doctor Strange Release

The battle for supremacy between Marvel and DC Comics is legendary and hardly a secret. But while DC hopes to redeem its disappointing track record with Wonder Woman, a superhero film based entirely on a woman and the all-star Justice League, its the mystical Doctor Strange that could open up a whole new dimension for Marvel.

What fans don’t know is that the film’s lead star, Benedict Cumberbatch, was busy with a stage production of Hamlet while Doctor Strange was being cast. Though Ryan Gosling and Jared Leto’s names were thrown around, it was direct Scott Derrickson who insisted to the studio chiefs that they cast Cumberbatch only which meant delaying the film’s release from summer 2016 to fall 2016.

Meanwhile, the film which shows Cumberbatch as an arrogant surgeon whose life changes after an accident, is, for the actor a journey like no other. In a recent interview, Cumberbatch explained how his character in the film will evolve.

“I’d say the major curve for him is that he (Stephen Strange) learns that it’s not all about him, that there’s a greater good. But what he thinks he was doing as a neurosurgeon, that was good because it benefitted people’s health was really just a furtherment of his attempts to control death and control his own fate and other people’s, but that’s still driven by the ego. So he becomes more ‘ego-less’ but he’s, I would say, more lonely maybe by the end of the film. I would say that he’s a kick-ass sorcerer by the end of the film, so that’s a major change.” 

—Originally published by The News