Neil Gaiman & Guillermo Del Toro Pitched A ‘Doctor Strange’ Movie To Marvel That Would Have Taken Place In The 1920s

Author and comic book writer Neil Gaiman has been making quite an impact on television in recent years with his series “American Gods,” “Good Omens,” “Lucifer,” and the newly released “The Sandman” on Netflix. However, the famed genre writer almost got involved with the Marvel Cinematic Universe in the early days and confirmed a longstanding rumor about wanting to make a “Doctor Strange” film. 

While speaking with host Josh Horowitz for the podcast Happy Sad Confused, Gaiman dished that he and Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (“The Shape of Water”)  indeed pitched a version of “Doctor Strange” to Marvel’s Kevin Fiege and first talked to the studio head in 2007. This, of course, was the year before “Iron Man” was released and changed the blockbuster landscape. However, the studio didn’t bite as they were more concerned about other characters.

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“Kevin and I have spoken a few times over the years on things,” he revealed. “The only one that I wish, although, odds are probably, I think the way they did it commercially was better than…but I remember back in 2007, having minimalistic conversations with Kevin Feige about ‘What about Doctor Strange?’ Then talking to Guillermo Del Toro, and Guillermo and I having these ideas about Doctor Strange and starting the beginning, me starting the beginning of the conversation with Kevin about ‘I could do Doctor Strange with Guillermo.’ And basically, they said ‘We just want to concentrate on the core characters right now. Doctor Strange is way up the line, we don’t want to go there.’”

A neat tidbit mentioned by Gaiman is that they wanted to have Stephen Strange a much more world-weary character, having been living in Greenwich Village for 90 years after previously being “the greatest magician” from the 1920s or 1930s without really aging.

“There were some cool things in it. My favorite Doctor Strange thing was the idea of…the one thing that we really wanted to do was have his adventures, have him become an alcoholic and a disbarred physician, all that sort of stuff, happen in the 1920s,” said Gaiman. “So the idea is that he went through all of that and the training to become the world’s greatest magician maybe in the early-’30s, late-’20s, and he’s been living in Greenwich Village for 90 years looking the same in his place, and nobody really notices. We just sort of liked that idea, and he would have been sort of out of time. But other than that, it would have just been very sort of Steve Ditko, because, you know, that’s the best.”

Funny enough, “Doctor Strange” actor Benedict Cumberbatch almost crossed paths with del Toro on another project that he almost helmed with “The Hobbit” films. Cumberbatch was cast as Smaug and the Necromancer.

This wouldn’t be the only time del Toro attempted to get involved with Marvel projects. He once was attached to develop a “Hulk” television series at ABC in 2010 before the project was killed and the director moved on to other things. The director had also been courted for an early version of the “Thor” film back when Avi Arad was still overseeing Marvel and once considered tackling “The Wolverine” for 20th Century Fox before James Mangold was ultimately chosen after Darren Aronofsky exited the “X-Men” spinoff.