Right, where are we? This has gotten a bit confusing, so let’s get up to date.
Doctor Strange star Benedict Cumberbatch reportedly started pay negotiations for the movie’s sequel at the start of the summer, landing a £7.5 million payday for his efforts. Said negotiations happened to take place around the time of Gunn Gate, where director James Gunn was fired off Guardians Of The Galaxy 3 by Disney for old ‘bad taste joke’ tweets that were dug up online by the alt-right. Putting two and two together, there was then speculation that Doctor Strange 2 could slip into GOTG3‘s spring 2019 production start date while the movie floundered for a director to take on Gunn’s existing script.
Since then, Black Panther 2 has been officially confirmed, with Ryan Coogler back to direct, Spider-Man: Far From Home has been filming here in the UK and in Atlanta, and Scarlett Johansson has accepted $15 million for a solo Black Widow movie. But it appears that Doctor Strange 2 is indeed next on Marvel’s MCU slate.
Benedict Wong rocked up to Fan Expo Vancouver to chat about a little bit of everything over the weekend, confirming that he’s filmed something for Avengers 4, and also surprising everyone in this dimension and the many others he and the Master Of The Mystic Arts have known to visit by saying he hopes to start filming Doctor Strange 2 by the end of 2018.
This will probably give those of you who were incredulous that Marvel could sort out slotting Strange 2 into GOTG3‘s production date a bit of a headache, but perhaps this has been a matter of scheduling urgency with regards to actor availability. Or maybe Disney and Marvel were always planning for it to go down this way, and just didn’t want to confirm anything for as long as possible before Avengers 4 lands in April. There’s also a distinct possibility that Wong meant by the end of 2019, and not 2018. We certainly wouldn’t 100% rule that out.
Either way, there’s no confirmation on Doctor Strange 2 from Marvel yet, and it might still be a while unless Wong’s comments push the studio to finally reveal its plans.
Speculation, speculation, speculation! We’ll keep you up to date, of course.