The True Story Behind Wes Craven's Failed Doctor Strange Movie

With the Doctor Strange movie rights once again up for grabs, American film producer Charles Band decided to option the property. Band was known for cult horror favourites like Subspecies, Puppet Master, and Re-Animator, so a darker take on the Sorcerer Supreme was definitely on the cards here.

Band quickly set about developing the project with his company Full Moon Entertainment, but disaster struck when his license to use Doctor Strange expired, meaning that the movie could no longer go ahead. At this point, Band had two options: he could scrap all the work that had been done so far and move on to something else; or, he could take the Doctor Strange project and rework it.

He chose the latter.

The result was 1992's Doctor Mordrid, a superhero action film that, as you can probably tell from the above poster, bears many similarities to Doctor Strange. Jeffrey Combs - who had worked with Band on Re-Animator - played the title role of Anton Mordrid, a sorcerer who must stop the evil Kabal from destroying the Earth!

As early '90s B-movies go, Doctor Mordrid looks surprisingly impressive, although its scant 74-minute runtime does leave its story feeling underdeveloped. Still, it wasn't the absolute disaster its uniquely troubled production would leave you to believe.

Back to the proper Doctor Strange though, and with Band's option expired, another company landed the rights to make a Doctor Strange film - and this is where horror master Wes Craven entered the picture.