Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness bought into the theatres a Multiverse epic that was not what Marvel had in mind. It made it’s theatre debut after one year of the original release date. The changes started with changes by the director. As Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson left the position for Doctor Strange 2 as Marvel signed Sam Raimi for the job. He was the headman for the Spiderman trilogy. The biggest change that happened in this movie is when Scarlet Witch ended up becoming Doctor Strange 2’s villain.
Doctor Strange 2’s original villain – Nightmare
Michael Waldron spoke to Den of geek on how the movie included Nightmare as it’s original villain. Nightmare is a classic Marvel Comic character. Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff was confirmed for the movie on Comic con’s event. Waldron and director Sam Raimi changed the script with Wanda on Board. They changed the script when Multiverse was more depended on MCU’s future. Waldron searched for a more “mutiversal adversary” which led to him changing the villain. He says,
“There was different stuff. I think it’s been reported that once upon a time, there was some talk of Nightmare and stuff like that. But when I came on board, it was a Multiverse story. And so it was always about trying to figure out who that multiversal adversary was going to be.”
With Pandemic, He and Raimi re- examined everything on what to use in the final.
“When I originally came on in February of 2020, Sam and I inherited the story that had been worked on by Scott and Jade Bartlett, the original writer on the project. It had a lot of really cool ideas in it, and we were initially going to just try to figure out our version of that story in time to start shooting the movie in May. Then COVID happened a month later, and the movie was pushed, which afforded us an opportunity to kind of start over and re-examine what we wanted the movie to be.”
“He had just been on an adventure with kids before this, and I think that might be the biggest thing affecting how he would interface with America. She wasn’t a totally unknown quantity to him when it came to relating to a teenager.”
Pre release changes in Doctor Strange 2
Pandemic made everything delayed. This gave a lot of time to the makers to remove Nightmare as the villain, until fans found out about Wanda’s role in Doctor Strange 2.
Even with major changes in the film which led to reshoots, fans are still excited.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now playing in theatres worldwide.
Also read: Doctor Strange 2 Writer Confirms More Sinister Threat Than Thanos In MCU Next Phase