One of the biggest rumors to emanate from the early days of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness was that Scott Derrickson departed the project over a highly specific set of creative differences, with the veteran horror filmmaker keen to take the Marvel Cinematic Universe in a scarier direction than ever before, only for Kevin Feige to deny his request.
While that hasn’t been 100% proven or debunked as of yet, it was placed a little more firmly into the territory of rumor and hearsay when Sam Raimi came aboard as his replacement, with the Spider-Man trilogy director obviously having got his foot in the Hollywood door via The Evil Dead.
Since then, we’ve been inundated with the cast and crew repeatedly telling us that Doctor Strange 2 is the MCU’s first sojourn into truly terrifying territory, something Raimi doubled down upon during his appearance on the Phaze Zero podcast.
“That’s really what Marvel and Kevin Feige wanted to do: they wanted to make Multiverse of Madness their first Marvel entry into the horror film, kind of dipping their toe into the water. But it wasn’t supposed to be Earth-quaking, ground-shaking terror. It was supposed to be the kind of horror and scariness and spookiness you’d find in a Doctor Strange comic.”
We’re still talking about a PG-13 rated superhero blockbuster at the end of the day, though, but a recent listing breaking down the various scary elements of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness painted an exciting picture.