Marvel’s Doctor Strange won’t arrive in a theater near you until late next year, but it’s never too early to tease a project with this kind of buzz. With that in mind, the studio just released the first photo from the film (below), which landed on the cover of Entertainment Weekly’s First Look issue.
The shot showcases Doctor Stephen Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), the titular man of magic, conjuring up some sort of ancient symbol and looking mesmerizing in his royal blue tunic and dramatic crimson cape. Cumberbatch’s intense stare is certainly befitting an all-powerful sorcerer and, while it’s still far too early to say anything definitive, he certainly seems like the right actor for the part.
“A brilliant but arrogant surgeon gets a new lease on life when a sorcerer takes him under his wing and trains him to defend the world against evil,” says IMDB, and anyone who’s seen Sherlock or The Imitation Game can attest that brilliant but arrogant is sort of Cumberbatch’s thing. Still, though the actor might seem like a natural fit, he told EW that stepping into Strange’s shoes was not immediately comfortable:
“It was like, okay, I’ve got to keep throwing these poses, these spells, these rune-casting things, everything he does physically. I’m thinking, there’s going to be a huge amount of speculation and intrigue over the positioning of that finger as opposed to it being there, or there. And I’m still working on that. We haven’t played any of those scenes yet. I felt really self-conscious. But, then, by the end, it was great. It’s like anything, you just have to experiment.”
While some movie fans are beginning to suffer from comic book adaptation fatigue, Doctor Strange isn’t exactly your typical superhero fare. Early reports suggest that this film will look to send moviegoers on a mystical, metaphysical, mind-bending journey and will be much further “out there” than previous Marvel projects.
Co-starring in the film are Rachel McAdams, Tilda Swinton, Mads Mikkelsen, and Chiwetel Ejiofor, with Horror maven Scott Derrickson directing.
Doctor Strange is currently set for a November 4, 2016 release. Details are scarce for the time being, but we’ll be sure to update you with photos, teasers, trailers, etc. as they become available.
