Recruiting “Doctor Strange”‘s incredible cast was a lot of work
“Well, Benedict was the first person we talked to. We all wanted him. I flew to London and he wanted to do it, but the schedule didn’t work out because he was doing ‘Hamlet.’ Then we pushed the movie four months to get him, and then it was kind of picking the different roles one at a time and having to meet with the different actors one at a time, and we just didn’t go out to a bunch of actors for different roles. It was a very systematic process, one character at a time. All of them, because of the caliber of actors they are, long discussions to really understand what we were making and what their characters were and what the tone was. Everybody we went after, we got. I think part of it is also that good actors, I think, make the fantastical feel real. If you treat their characters as real characters in the real world among the fantastical, everything is elevated. The reality is more real and the fantastical feels more real. I think they had confidence I would make the movie that way. I certainly promised them I would. The result was an incredibly invigorating process on set. To watch actors of this caliber work together is incredible. There are some long dialogue scenes with Benedict and Tilda that are awesome, that are just fantastical as anything you’re seen in the visuals because they are that good actors.”
– Scott Derrickson
Regarding Stephen Strange’s mention in “Captain America: Winter Soldier”
“Why he was mentioned? We always thought that program that Alexander Piece was working on, the scary thing about it was that it identified not just current threats, but people that could become threats. So, clearly that algorithm was so smart that it didn’t realize he as going to become the Master of the Mystic Arts, but I think it said, ‘Here is an arrogant, independent, super-smart guy that if [he] were to ever cross us or we couldn’t take into the HYDRA fold, we should take out.’ He had the potential to make Robert Redford’s [character] upset.”
– Kevin Feige
With fan interest so high, is there any chance the “Black Panther” comes out earlier than February 2018?
“No. No. Takes a long time to make these movies. We are racing toward the start date in January and we just announced a few new cast members and there will be a few more after that. It’s going very, very well. Joe Robert Cole and Ryan Coogler have put together a great script and a great story.”
– Kevin Feige
Disney isn’t pushing for more movies and an MCU production update
“As always, I’ll only talk about the movies, and we always said what was great about the studio and Disney is that at no point did anybody say, ‘Churn out another one! Three a year! Keep ’em coming!’ They always said, ‘Two is fine unless something comes up.’ And the things that come up is when we have something that is essentially good to go. And instead of actively holding back a movie, we said, ‘No, let’s do it.’ The studio is built. We have an amazing team that are sort of firing on all cylinders. We were able to do three and the three next year: ‘Spidey’ is done, ‘Thor: [Ragnarök]’ finishes in two weeks in Australia, and then that’s all in the can for next year. And then next year ‘Panther’ starts in January and ‘Infinity War’ starts in January at the same time. ‘Ant-Man [and the Wasp]’ almost overlapping. ‘Panther’ will be done by then.”
– Kevin Feige
“Doctor Strange” opens nationwide on Nov. 4.