Depending on who you believe, Scott Derrickson either stepped down or was fired from the director’s chair on the project that eventually became Sam Raimi’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but there doesn’t appear to be any hard feelings on the filmmaker’s part.
Derrickson’s background in horror made him an unusual choice to helm a family-friendly superhero origin story, but he acquitted himself well, even if Benedict Cumberbatch’s solo debut as the Sorcerer Supreme isn’t widely lauded for ranking among the top tier of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
The second post-credits scene of Eternals and the upcoming Blade reboot could be signaling a shift into darker, more horrific and all-round supernatural territory in the MCU’s near future, which seems much more up Derrickson’s street. In a recent social media exchange with a fan, he admitted that he’d never completely close the door on a return to the MCU.
Since Doctor Strange, Derrickson has returned to what he knows best by helming The Black Phone, which has been winning strong early notices ahead of a February 2022 release. The MCU doesn’t really do scary, or at least it hasn’t yet, but there may yet be an opening for the brains behind The Exorcism of Emily Rose, Sinister and Deliver Us from Evil.