In full promotion of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Benedict Cumberbatch reveals that before playing the famous spellcaster, he had been approached by Marvel to play the villain of an MCU Phase 2 film.
Benedict Cumberbatch might not have been the MCU’s Doctor Strange! In 2011, the British actor could have played a supervillain from the film Thor: The Dark World and faced the famous Asgardian god, but which character should he play?
Thor 2 is one of the unloved films of the MCU, and Cumberbatch could have played Malekith, leader of the Dark Elves. It must be said that at the time, Cumberbatch had just played the fearsome Khan in Star Trek Into Darkness (2013) and was no doubt looking to play something other than a new adversary in a well-known saga.
He therefore refused, as he confided to the microphone of the BBC Radio 1 :
I dared to be bold and tell them: ‘I prefer to wait for something more substantial’. I was not contacted again until they got back to me via their [représentants] to tell me they were interested.
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Malekith in Thor 2
And that’s how with a “no, but” Benedict Cumberbatch opened the doors to the Marvel Cinematic Universe as a recurring superhero rather than having come to play the villain of a movie never to return. Malekith was eventually played by another British actor, Christopher Eccleston.
As for Cumberbatch, he was finally able to find his MCU character, but his acceptance of the role of Stephen Strange was not obvious:
“I looked through the comics and I thought ‘whoa’, because he’s very old school, a little misogynistic, very much rooted in the 70s. I thought it was a little cutesy, and I don’t Wasn’t sure it was a great role in the MCU, I didn’t understand. They were like, ‘No, he’ll be current, he’ll be a man of today. Of course he’ll have some of those aspects, because he thinks he’s very important. He has to display that arrogance.”
Hemsworth and Cumberbatch face to face in Thor: Ragnarok (2017)
Cumberbatch finally sided with Marvel’s arguments and he has become the face of Doctor Strange in the MCU since his first appearance in 2016. He has appeared six times in this connected universe of which he could become one of the spearheads . Indeed, Multiverse of Madness continues to evolve the character to reduce his arrogance and place him more as a potential leader.
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