‘Doctor Strange’ Cast and Director Talk About the Film’s Inspiration and Expanding the Marvel Cinematic Universe

The forces responsible for bringing Marvel’s “Doctor Strange” to the screen agree: The production surpassed their fantasies, fulfilling childhood dreams by allowing them to live in a bizarre world of magic spells and kung fu fighting.

“When we were in New York we were on Fifth Avenue and there were as many paparazzi as there were crew, it was getting a little bit surreal,” Benedict Cumberbatch, who plays the title sorcerer, said in a recent discussion of the film. “We were on Fifth Avenue and running … and there was the Empire State Building in the same eye line, and it was just a moment of magic. To think that the men and women that first crafted these comics on the floors of that building and other buildings in that town, and there I was playing one of those characters.”

Mads Mikkelson, the Danish actor who plays the magician’s adversary, was similarly enchanted when he stepped into the Strange world. It meant getting to combine two of his greatest childhood dreams into one role, which he realized when he was pitched the part by director Scott Derrickson.

“Basically half of my life I was reading comic books and the other half I was watching Bruce Lee,” Mikkelson said. So when Scott was pitching this story for me, I think 10 minutes within the pitch he said, ‘and there’s a lot of kung fu and flying stuff.’ I said, ‘Whoa, hold on, rewind. Look, babe, kung fu? I’m on, let’s go.’ It’s a childhood dream coming true.”

“Doctor Strange,” which also stars Tilda Swinton (as the Ancient One), Chiwetel Ejiofor and Rachel McAdams, hits screens this week, the latest entry in the Marvel catalog to get its big-screen debut.

“We always say we have to push the boundaries,” said Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige.

“We have to keep surprising people, we have to keep making them unique and different, and certainly this movie and this character fits all of that.”

For Derrickson the thrill was putting the characters in visual settings that would be today’s equivalent of the original psychedelia-influenced Doctor Strange comics.

“The challenge was to try to make a movie that is as visually progressive by movie standards as the art was in the 1960s,” he said. “Our primary source of inspiration was the early Stan Lee, Steve Ditko comics, and that artwork is still progressive. You look at lot of the panels in the comics … and visual effects have just caught up to where we can do some of the things that we did in this movie. The trick of it was to not hold back and to push ourselves as far as possible to do original things.”

Doctor Strange is the latest in a line of movies to mine less familiar titles of the Marvel Comics brand, purchased by Walt Disney Co. on the strength of the potential appeal of heroes that are not as well-known as top titles Spider-Man, Fantastic Four and X-Men.

Cumberbatch said it was an honor to play Doctor Strange.

“It’s incredibly flattering,” he said. “It’s a weight of responsibility as well obviouslyIt’s a great motivator to try and do a good job and fulfill, you know, the promise they’ve shown you, or that they’ve given to you. I always get that phrase wrong but you know what I mean. It’s a good thing. It’s a very good place to start from.”

Derrickson said the studio even changed the release date to get Cumberbatch on board.

Well, what happened was Kevin Feige and I talked about who we wanted in the role and we landed on Benedict pretty quickly and just felt he was right,” the director said. “I flew to London, met with him, explained the movie. I think I had some of my concept art at that point and Benedict really wanted to do it, but he was doing ‘Hamlet ‘in theatre in London. We were a summer release movie, so it wasn’t going to work, you know, and I came back and I met with a bunch of other actors, good actors, but I just felt like it had to be Benedict. And Kevin, to his credit, agreed, and so we pushed the schedule for him.

Doctor Strange opens nationwide Nov. 4.