Kevin Feige Talks DOCTOR STRANGE's Weirdness And Tilda Swinton Playing 'The Ancient One'
Marvel Studios' president of production has now offered some new details on the long-awaited Doctor Strange, including the Sorcerer Supreme's sanctum and The Ancient One's race and gender.
With the cast filling out and director Scott Derrickson currently prepping in London, Marvel's long-awaited Doctor Strange adaptation is set to start shooting this November. During the recent press junket for Marvel's Ant-Man, Birth.Movies.Death. had garnered some new details about the "Phase Three" movie from the head of Marvel Studios, Kevin Feige. When asked if Stephen Strange's Sanctum Sanctorum will still be located in NYC's Greenwich Village, given the neighborhood is now more upscale than it was in the comics, Feige assured, "The Sanctum is on Bleeker Street, the modern day Bleeker Street. He will be the strangest thing walking out onto that street."
About the potential casting of Tilda Swinton as The Ancient One, which would alter the character's gender and race in Doctor Strange, Kevin Feige says, "As we were developing this film we looked at The Ancient One as a mantle more than a specific person" He continued, "The sorcerers have been around for millennia, protecting us from things we didn’t know about until this story. There have been multiple [Ancient Ones], even if this one has been around for five hundred years, there were others. This is a mantle, and therefore felt we had leeway to cast in interesting ways."
Asked how fantastical Doctor Strange will be, Kevin Feige dropped a minor Ant-Man spoiler. "We send Ant-Man on a very weird, mind-bending journey at the end of Ant-Man," he said. "It was something we hadn’t seen in a shrinking movie before, but it also represents the tip of the mind-bending weirdness we’re going to do in Strange, which I think will surprise people." Later during the interview, Feige stated that Doctor Strange won't "entirely" abandon the phony Tibetan mysticism that Stan Lee used in the comics. He also said that Strange will not be tied to Tibetan culture, as he "leaves New York in search of something and heads east." What do you think?
Starring Benedict Cumberbatch (Dr. Stephen Strange) and Chiwetel Ejiofor (Baron Mordo), with Tilda Swinton (Ancient One) in early talks, Doctor Strange will be released on November 4, 2016.