Sam Raimi, The Best ‘Spider-Man’ Director, Is Directing the New ‘Dr. Strange’ Film

By James Sainte-Claire April 15, 2020

The reason that Marvel Studios has produced such consistent films is a lot of the power of the film-making process has been taken away from the filmmakers and is wielded by studio execs like Kevin Feige. Despite that, though, the films that were actually good and not merely okay, 3/5 experiences are the ones with strong input from directors. James Gunn and Jon Favreau come to mind as Iron Man and Guardians of the Galaxy and its sequel were a cut above. Likewise, the Russo Brothers came in and set the house on fire with Captain America: The Winter Soldier when they were primarily known for directing quirky, cult-hit sitcoms like Arrested Development, Community and Happy Endings even if their later outings for Marvel would be more company-line 3/5 popcorn fair.

Good news for fans of Doctor Strange, then, as the second film in that series just signed up Sam Raimi. You probably know Raimi from either Spider-Man 2 or Evil Dead, depending on how cool you are.

Raimi played it cool, just sort dropping the news into an interview with ComingSoon.net after mentioning how he dropped Strange’s name into his second Spider-Man film.

“I loved Doctor Strange as a kid, but he was always after Spider-Man and Batman for me, he was probably at number five for me of great comic book characters,” Raimi described. “He was so original, but when we had that moment in Spider-Man 2 I had no idea that we would ever be making a Doctor Strange movie, so it was really funny to me that coincidentally that line was in the movie. I gotta say I wish we had the foresight to know that I was going to be involved in the project.”

Raimi is absolutely the kind of guy who can make a great film at Marvel, if that sort of thing is still possible. I know you’re about to say Thor: Ragnarok but I just didn’t feel that one; it seemed too much like it was copying Guardians of the Galaxy and not doing the things that made the Thor films unique.

The real, burning question, though, is who will Brice Campbell play?