Iconic fantasy/horror director Sam Raimi is the man behind the next Doctor Strange movie, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
This also isn’t his first time to direct a Marvel movie, as he also directed the first Spider-Man trilogy.
Those movies were very important for Marvel, as they proved that the X-Men franchise was not an anomaly and that superhero movies could make big bucks and turn out great stories.
Sam Raimi and Spider-Man
Those three movies included the groundbreaking first one with Tobey Maguire as Spider-Man battling Willem Defoe’s Green Goblin. The second one, which featured Doctor Octopus, is still considered one of the best superhero movies ever made.
However, things went bad with Spider-Man 3, as Sony tried to interfere and ordered Raimi to include Venom in a storyline where he wanted Sandman to be the key villain, and it ended up ending that Spider-Man run with Raimi leaving after that film.
So, how is Raimi dealing with Doctor Strange while working in the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Marvel Studios for the first time? In a Reddit AMA, he said there are higher expectations for him this time around.
Sam Raimi and Doctor Strange
While Sam Raimi faced studio interference in the third Spider-Man movie, he didn’t have those same problems with the first two movies.
He said it was because there were “fewer expectations back then” for superhero movies based on Marvel Comics characters.
At that time, there had been only two successful Marvel characters brought to the big screen. New Line Cinema released Blade in 1998. Fox released X-Men in 2000. Both were successful.
Sony released Spider-Man in 2002.
The key here is there are three Marvel characters, but all from different studios, so the expectations were nowhere near what they are now that Marvel movies are a billion-dollar venture.
There is also the fact that Spider-Man had nothing behind it, so it was a new world that Raimi created on his own based on Marvel Comics.
Sony didn’t even have a problem with Raimi using some of his Evil Dead influences in Spider-Man 2, something that provided fun Easter eggs for his fans. Based on the fact that Edgar Wright couldn’t get his Ant-Man movie made, the MCU is a little stricter with what it allows directors.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness has over 20 movies of Marvel history to take into account, including WandaVision, which Raimi said he didn’t see ahead of time.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness hits theaters on March 25, 2022.