Marvel Turned Down Guillermo Del Toro’s Doctor Strange

According to Neil Gaiman, Marvel said no to a proposed ‘Doctor Strange’ movie pitched by himself and horror maestro Guillermo del Toro.

Amazingly, the pair who have quite a CV - Gaiman’s written episodes of ‘Doctor Who’, and novels ‘Stardust’ and ‘Coraline’, with del Toro responsible for ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and ‘Pacific Rim’ - we’re shot down when approaching Marvel.

The news actually came about when Gaiman wrote back to a tweet, which publicly spilled the beans for the first time.

While Scott Derrickson’s film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Rachel McAdams, Tilda Swinton and Chiwetel Ejiofer looks awesome, we can’t help but think what it could’ve been like had Gaiman and GdT gotten their hands on it.

Gaiman’s been vocal about his admiration for the source material in the past and in 2008 spoke about it: “I mentioned to him that I’ve been, in very very early sort of “I would to do this” talks with Marvel about doing a ‘Doctor Strange movie’, and Guillermo’s reaction was, ‘Neil, I want to direct it!’”

But del Toro was more coy on the matter, insisting it never even got off the ground: “When Neil Gaiman was visiting ‘Hellboy II’, he literally said, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to do Doctor Strange together?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, that would be cool.’ (laughs) That was the extent of the discussion, and then four or five weeks later it was like ‘Neil Gaiman and Guillermo Developing Dr. Strange for Marvel,’ and Marvel had never heard of that development and neither have I.”

Either way, with the likes of ‘Hellboy’ under his belt and the super stylish ‘Crimson Peak’ earlier this year, we can but dream…

‘Doctor Strange’ is currently in production and is due out in the UK on 28 October, 2016.

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Picture credits: Marvel, Disney, Twitter