Scott Derrickson on why he didn’t return for DOCTOR STRANGE AND THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS

It was a big surprise when we found out Doctor Strange director Scott Derrickson he wouldn’t direct the sequel, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The reason he left was because his vision of the story was very different from what Marvel Studios wanted to tell.

During a recent episode of The Playlist’s The Discourse podcast, Derrickson spoke about the creative differences and how it ultimately led him to abandon the sequel. He explained:

“All I can say is that what we have said publicly is exactly the truth. We had real creative differences. You know, the movie I wanted to make and the way I wanted to make it was different than it was just more and more obvious that we were clashing. And that’s how you make a really bad movie, I think. When the producer or the studio and the director make different movies, you end up with a monstrosity and, you know, that’s why I had to bounce.

While it sucked to see him go, I don’t blame him for walking away from the project. He’s right, the film would have suffered if the two sides of the creative force wanted two different things. In the end, Sam Raimi he ended up replacing him and took the film in a direction that Marvel Studios was obviously happy with. In the end, I liked what Raimi delivered! I like that the film leans into the horror aspect of the story. It was a pretty wild movie!

Derrickson was in charge of directing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness When the sequel was initially announced, he previously said that he wanted to include Nightmare in the film and that he intended to use the evil character to explore the Nightmare Realm, which would be really cool and interesting. Marvel, on the other hand, wanted to play more with the whole multiverse aspect of the universe.

Derrickson went on to say that his version of Doctor Strange 2 it would have been an “extreme departure from the first film” and would have been a “true horror film”.