While the MCU's theatrical run received a slight delay for 2022, it will officially kick off in May with the highly-anticipated Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Following Benedict Cumberbatch's first encounter with the Multiverse in December's Spider-Man: No Way Home, his Sorcerer Supreme will be in for an adventure unlike anything he's ever seen in next summer's sequel.
Plenty of this has to do with his new co-star, Elizabeth Olsen's Wanda Maximoff, who realized her full potential as the Scarlet Witch at the end of WandaVision. Putting two of the most powerful magicians in the MCU alongside each other should make for an explosive story which is also rumored to include Tom Hiddleston's Loki.
Recently, reports announced that the Doctor Strange sequel was set to undergo major reshoots over the coming weeks, although it came with mixed feelings from insiders and fans about how it would affect the movie as a whole. A recent snippet from earlier this year helps to explain how the movie is realizing its "full potential."
Benedict Cumberbatch on Doctor Strange 2 Reshoots
In an excerpt from the January 2021 edition of Empire Magazine, Doctor Strange actor Benedict Cumberbatch detailed the process behind the reshoots for Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Facing numerous production delays, Cumberbatch admitted that things were "just a little slower," but that the reshoots would help make Doctor Strange 2 the best it can be. Specifically, part of the additional photography was true reshoots to improve already-shot scenes, while the rest of it was filming for additional scenes that were "just impossible to do on the day:"
"We’re in the middle of reshoots and we’re working incredibly hard to make a schedule work to realize the full potential of the film - bits that we want to do better but also bits that were just impossible to do on the day because of logistics, COVID, etc. We were so delayed in production because of that. Luckily, not during production too much. Although everything is just a little slower."
Reshoots to Make Doctor Strange 2 Reign Supreme
Every single MCU movie has faced delays in Phase 4. Even before the pandemic was shuffling schedules, Marvel Studios has had reshoots planned in their initial production schedules for all of its movies, regardless of other outside factors. These quotes seemed to come from the movie's initial round of reshoots in January, although Doctor Strange 2 has faced its fair share of other issues as well.
The biggest factor in this was the fact that the movie was initially supposed to release before Spider-Man: No Way Home, which forced both movies to change their stories to make the overarching narrative work. Now, the team is deep into bigger reshoots as the team is working almost every day for roughly six weeks straight.
Cumberbatch hasn't shown any sense of panic throughout these reshoots, which are rumored to be adding some major plot points to this already major MCU outing. The details of these reshoots' plot points likely won't come to light for some time with Doctor Strange 2 still six months away, but it seems clear that Marvel isn't in any state of panic throughout the process.
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness will debut in theaters on May 6, 2022.
