The Doctor (Maybe) in the House (Movie)

Word is that Mar­vel Comics, fresh off the suc­cess of such movies as Iron Man and Thor is now look­ing at anoth­er char­ac­ter for a pos­si­ble movie. That char­ac­ter is Doc­tor Stephen Strange, oth­er­wise known as Doc­tor Strange, Mas­ter of the Mys­tic Arts and Sor­cer­er Surpreme.

Doc­tor Strange is one Mar­vel’s less­er-known (which puts him in the same class as Iron Man and Thor, come to think of it) and old­est (Strange Tales #110. July, 1963) char­ac­ters, cre­at­ed by writer Stan Lee and artist Steve Ditko. Doc­tor Strange was once Doc­tor Stephen Strange, a suc­cess­ful but arro­gant sur­geon, until an acci­dent dam­aged his hands such that he could­n’t prac­tice. His only hope was the mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure known as the Ancient One, but Doc­tor Strange soon real­ized his path was away from his sur­gi­cal prac­tice and instead the prac­tice of the mys­tic arts. The good Doc­tor has sur­vived many changes and many tri­als in his com­ic career, and giv­en his back sto­ry, could make for a good movie.

And that is appar­ent­ly what is hap­pen­ing. Accord­ing to the Twtich Film web­site, here, Mar­vel already has a script in hand, from screen­writ­ers Thomas Don­nel­ly and Joshua Oppen­heimer, who were respon­si­ble for the recent Conan reboot movie, and are report­ed­ly in the process of con­tract­ing a direc­tor and seek­ing the right actor to play the part. (Of course, there was a Doc­tor Strange movie, a MFTV pro­duc­tion from 1978. We won’t talk about it right now.)

I for one would love to see the good Doc­tor on the big screen, prop­er­ly done, of course. I’ve been a fan of the char­ac­ter for many years, and many of the sto­ries (and some of the art­work) is clas­sic mate­r­i­al. That he has a num­ber of hyp­not­ic spells in his arse­nal, not to men­tion his amulet, the Eye of Agg­amo­to, which has the pow­er to hyp­no­tize, only adds to the appeal.