It was a big surprise when we learned that Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson wasn’t going to be directing the sequel, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The reason why he left was because his vision for the story was much different than the one that Marvel Studios wanted to tell.
During a recent episode of The Playlist’s The Discourse podcast, Derrickson talked about the creative differences and how that ultimately caused him to walk away from the sequel. He explained:
“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.”
While it sucked to see him go, I don’t blame him for stepping away from the project. He’s right, the movie would’ve suffered with the two sides of the creative force wanting two different things. In the end, Sam Raimi ended up replacing him and took the film in a direction that Marvel Studios was obviously happy with. Ultimately, I liked what Raimi delivered! I like that the movie leaned into the horror aspect of the story. It was a pretty wild movie!
Derrickson was attached to direct Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness when the sequel was initially announced he previously said that he wanted to include Nightmare in the film and intended to use the villainous character to explore the Nightmare Realm, which also would’ve been really cool and interesting. Marvel, on the other hand, wanted to play more with the whole multiverse aspect of the universe.
Derrickson went on to say that his version of Doctor Strange 2 would have been an “extreme departure from the first film” and would have been a “genuine horror film of sorts.”