The True Story Behind Wes Craven's Failed Doctor Strange Movie
2. Patrick Dempsey Is Stephen Strange?
With 2008's Iron Man proving such a massive success, Marvel Studios was emboldened to try and launch more lesser-known properties to big screen stardom.
One of those properties was Doctor Strange, and by 2009, Marvel Studios was actively looking for someone to write and develop the sorcerer's solo outing. The following year, Conan the Barbarian scribes Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer were hired, and their script was reportedly sent out to directors in 2011. Around this time, there were even rumours that Doctor Strange could be an animated Pixar movie, which, thinking about it, we really want to see.
The early 2010s is also when actors' names started being bandied about for the project, with Grey's Anatomy star Patrick Dempsey going so far as to openly lobby for the role while promoting Transformers: Dark of the Moon:
"[I] would love to play Doctor Strange. It would be fantastic. It’d be a great TV show, especially for HBO or something like that.”
A short while later, Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed that Doctor Strange would be part of the MCU's Phase Three, and Brave director Mark Andrews, Warm Bodies director Jonathan Levine, and Project Almanac director Dean Israelite were said to be in the running to helm the movie.
Another candidate was Sinister director Scott Derrickson, and it was here where Strange's bumpy, decades-long path to Hollywood finally started to bear fruit.