Doctor Strange 2 Is Scarier Since Sam Raimi Replaced Original Director

Doctor Strange 2 will be scarier because Sam Raimi replaced the original director Scott Derrickson, according to Michael Waldron. It’s been five years since Dr. Strange’s first solo outing in 2016, and Benedict Cumberbatch will be returning to his role as the Sorcerer Supreme in the 2022 sequel, officially titled Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. The long layoff between films is, of course, due to the coronavirus pandemic along with a few other speed bumps that slowed down development.

Scott Derrickson, who wrote and directed the first film, was set to return for the sequel, but left the project early on due to creative differences. Marvel then brought the Spider-Man trilogy director and horror aficionado Sam Raimi on board to go along with Michael Waldron as head writer, who now serves the same role on Loki. Along with the return of its titular surgeon-turned-sorcerer, Doctor Strange 2 will catch up with Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch after the events of WandaVision, though it is currently unclear how she will tie into the sequel’s plot.

Now, during an appearance on the Friends From Work podcast, Loki and Doctor Strange 2’s head writer Michael Waldron is opening up about the experience of crafting the sequel along with Sam Raimi. Waldron admits that the first Doctor Strange wasn’t a horror movie, but it did have a certain “spookiness throughout it,” which he wanted to build on for the sequel, especially since he was working with such a prolific horror director in Raimi. With the additional time afforded to them due to pandemic-related delays, Waldron and his co-writer Jade Bartlett were able to nudge the sequel in a “slightly scarier direction.” Read Waldron’s full quote from the podcast below:

So when we came onto this one, we were…I felt so fortunate…the work he’d done on the first one, the work that he and the previous writer on the second one, Jade Bartlett, you know they’ve done some work on the second one, and it’s like you just dive in. In this case, COVID just gave me and Sam more time to make it our own thing…It’s cool, I’m glad that there was the chance to maybe push in a slightly scarier direction. Just because Sam does that so well.

Previously, Waldron said he and Raimi had to start completely from scratch when they took over the project from Derrickson. This implies that Doctor Strange 2 will be entirely their own work, though Waldron did admit they built off the slightly spooky foundation that Derrickson laid in the first film, such as Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mordo, who will return for the sequel.

It remains to be seen what “scarier direction” the sequel will take, but it will likely play out across the multiverse, as indicated by the title and the direction Phase 4 seems to be taking thus far. The film’s purported villain Shuma-Gorath, a monstrous interdimensional entity, certainly seems in line with the spookiness that Waldron is describing. Once the marketing campaign for Doctor Strange 2 kicks off, its slightly spookier angle will certainly become more apparent.