Original plans called for Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson to return for the sequel. The 2016 movie included visuals unlike anything we'd seen in the MCU before and delivered a clever final act which, while still heavy on VFX, cleverly played around with the concept of time.
Unfortunately, creative differences led to Derrickson parting ways with Marvel Studios. Spider-Man trilogy director Sam Raimi was enlisted to replace him and Loki writer Michael Waldron rewrote a screenplay which had once been penned by Jade Halley Bartlett (Miller's Girl).
ComicBook.com recently asked Bartlett about the time she spent working on Doctor Strange 2 - which would later be dubbed Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness - and she confirmed Derrickson's vision was vastly different to Raimi's.
"I was on the project for about a year. I was the first writer in on Doctor Strange 2, and it was really fun," she explained. "There are two versions. There's the Raimi, Michael Waldron version, which is exquisite, and I love both of them. Then, I was with Scott Derrickson. We developed it for about a year in the room with Kevin [Feige] and Eric [Hauserman Carroll] and Lou [D'Esposito] and Richie [Palmer]."
"It was Scott and it was really exciting and it was really fun. I still cannot believe I got that job. I don't know how I got that job. I did get the job. We had a whole draft, and then of course the pandemic happened, which was a nightmare."
Unfortunately, Bartlett wasn't allowed to share any details about that original draft but did praise Marvel Studios. "They're so kind and they're very generous. It was like getting to work with scholars, I guess, scholars of these comic books. So that was really fun," she enthused. "I think I have this giant binder of, I think, every Doctor Strange ever, which is pretty amazing, and it's in color. They printed it in color, so that was really exciting."
From what little we know about Derrickson's vision for the movie, it would have heavily featured Nightmare and largely avoided any Multiversal elements. In fact, it would have embraced horror in an even bigger way than Raimi's take.
Talking last year, the director said this about why he chose not to helm Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness:
"All I can say is that what we said publicly is exactly the truth. We had real creative differences. You know, the movie I wanted to make and how I wanted to make it was different than - it was just increasingly obvious that we were pulling against each other. And that’s how you make a really bad movie, I think. When the producer or the studio and the filmmaker are making different movies, you end up with a monstrosity and, you know, that’s why I had to bounce."
It's unclear whether he'll ever return to the MCU but last we heard, Marvel Studios wanted Raimi to work on Doctor Strange 3 (with the idea being that the threequel will be fast-tracked to arrive before the next Avengers movies).
Do you think the studio made a mistake by not committing to Derrickson's version of the sequel?