How Doctor Strange 2 Delay Changed No Way Home Script

Spider-Man: No Way Home screenwriters Erik Sommers and Chris McKenna reveal how Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness‘ delay changed the script of their Marvel movie. The MCU’s Phase 4 release calendar has changed numerous times since it was first announced in 2019, but as things stand now, Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange 2 is the next movie set to be released. Fresh off his appearance in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) will once again battle the multiverse in his long-awaited sequel, which also stars Elizabeth Olsen, Benedict Wong, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.

Doctor Strange 2 will debut in May 2022, though that wasn’t always the case. It was once slated to premiere in May 2021, with Spider-Man: No Way Home following in July. However, production delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic led to a switch with the two movies. For other films, one movie suddenly releasing after another might not impact much. However, as Doctor Strange appears in No Way Home and plays a key role in its multiversal premise, the order in which the Spider-Man movie and Doctor Strange 2 come out matters. A lot.

The surprise delay of Multiverse of Madness led Sommers and McKenna to adjust their Spider-Man: No Way Home script. Speaking to Variety, the writers revealed how the movies’ release date changes altered Doctor Strange’s role in No Way Home. Ultimately, McKenna explained, it came down to Strange’s knowledge of the multiverse and how that would play into the story. He said:

“We were actually working off of things that were happening in ‘Doctor Strange 2,’ and trying to incorporate them into our script. When we started writing, [Strange] knows firsthand the dangers of screwing with these things. Then we changed it so he was a person who doesn’t know that much about the multiverse. But that makes it even more frightening, to start fooling around with these things, because it’s the fear of the unknown. Either way, he was the voice of reason going, ‘You don’t mess with the fate of an individual’ — and Peter Parker being naive enough to go, ‘Why not? Why can’t we save these people?’”

In Spider-Man: No Way Home, the multiverse is split open after Doctor Strange attempts to cast a spell to make the world forget Peter Parker (Tom Holland) is the famed web-slinger. He cautions Peter that the multiverse is still a concept that he knows little about, which is a natural position for him to be in at this stage of the MCU. Had Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness come first, though, Stephen likely would’ve had a vastly different outlook on dealing with alternate realities. That could’ve changed No Way Home‘s story drastically, though McKenna and Sommers didn’t offer much insight into how else the script was different pre-Doctor Strange 2 delay.

Though the MCU’s interconnected nature is fun because of how the movies can intersect with each other, it can also lead to behind the scenes issues like this. The creative minds behind one Marvel project can’t always do exactly as they wish; the story must suit another, provided their characters or events overlap in any way. For Doctor Strange 2 and No Way Home, everything seemed to work out in the end. In fact, as McKenna pointed out, the necessary change might’ve even made Spider-Man: No Way Home better. Now that is a happy result indeed.

Source: Variety

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Rachel Labonte
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Rachel LaBonte is a news, feature, and movie review writer for Screen Rant with a deep passion for film and television. A graduate of Emerson College, she majored in Media Arts Production while specializing in screenwriting. She’s been a writer ever since high school when she realized she was rather good at it and joined as many entertainment news clubs as she could while in school. Most notably, she wrote for Emerson’s website Emertainment Monthly, and one of her film reviews won an Evvy (Emerson’s student awards) for Best Review. Her deep love of movies led to her working at a movie theater for five years, which she loved despite the angry customers. An avid reader who constantly buys books before reading the ones she already owns, Rachel is a huge fan of superheroes (especially of the Marvel variety) and wizards and will likely never be able to catch up on all the movies/TV shows she longs to watch.

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