Sean Carroll – Entertainment Science Consultant

It’s been months since we last heard about a possible ‘Doctor Strange’ movie and now it looks like it is actually moving forward towards getting made!

The last news heard about the movie was that Thomas Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer (collaborators for ‘Conan the Barbarian’) had turned in their script and that Marvel had drafted a short list of directors to start overseeing the project. Now we hear that scientist Sean Carroll has been hired as a consultant for the movie.

In the latest issue of Popular Mechanics, Carroll talks about how scientists are now being used by Hollywood to bring some legitimacy to the science used in the movies. In fact, the use of scientists have become more prominent when it comes to making sci-fi movies that the National Academy of Sciences launched the Science & Entertainment Exchange in 2008 where film makers can connect with scientists in various fields. In the first year that it was formed, it consulted (for free) on 70 projects. By September 2011, they have consulted on 350 projects including the shows ‘Fringe’, ‘The Big Bang Theory’, ‘Green Lantern’ and  ‘Battleship.’

Carroll himself consulted on the movie ‘Thor’ and stated that now that he’s finished with this movie, he’s moved on to ‘Doctor Strange.’  Carroll’s job is to apply limits to Doctor Strange’s powers.  As Carroll puts it, “You need constraints to provide tension. A world where anything can happen makes for a very boring movie. It’s when science imposes boundaries on what a superhero can do that the real drama begins.”

Interesting enough, Stan Lee really didn’t like Doctor Strange at first and in a letter to a Marvel fan in 1963, he stated that the tale was “just a 5 page filler.”

“Steve Ditko is gonna draw him. Sort of a black magic theme. The first story is nothing great, but perhaps we can make something of him—’twas Steve’s idea, and I [figgered] we’d give it a chance, although again, we had to rush the first one too much.”

You can read the entire letter over at The Mavel Age of Comic site which contains other great tidbits about Ant-Man, Spider-Man and The Fantastic Four.

So it looks like ‘Doctor Strange’ is getting closer to being made after all! Although there is no release date, Marvel has disclosed that there will be two superhero movies coming in 2014, one in April and another in May. Do you think ‘Doctor Strange’ will take one of those spots?