‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ almost included a larger Marvel Universe cameo– Doctor Strange! The movie is already packed. It focuses on Miles Morales (Shameik Moore), the “Ultimate” Spider-Man, but pairs him with an older, slightly burnt-out Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), plus Gwen Stacy (Spider-Gwen, Hailee Steinfeld), Spider-Man Noir (Nicolas Cage), Peni Parker (Kimiko Glenn) and Spider-Ham (John Mulaney).
But as producers Phil Lord and Christopher Miller recalled, three years ago, they had hoped to bring in Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme.
Lord reminisced, “The first draft ended with (Strange),” to which Miller reacted, “Oh, that’s right!” Lord then added, “It ended with him saying, ‘Okay, I have some things to tell you…’ It was the first draft, like three years ago. It ended with Doctor Strange. Literally, the last frame was Doctor Strange, going, ‘Hello.’”
They did not elaborate, but there could be a very simple explanation as to why Doctor Strange had to be cut– they didn’t have the rights to use him. ‘Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse’ is strictly a Sony release (similar to ‘Venom’), with no input from Marvel Studios or parent company Disney. ‘Doctor Strange’ solely belongs to Disney. The two studios simply have a truce in place to share Spider-Man, himself, plus certain supporting characters and villains, used in the live action movies, ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ and ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’, plus Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe releases.
While Sony boasts that they have the rights to 900 characters to use in their own movies, these are all connected directly to Spider-Man. There is really no logical explanation as to why they could use Doctor Strange, outside of Marvel Studios simply allowing them to do so out of the goodness of its heart. But this is show business.
Interestingly enough, this summer rumors percolated that Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange might cameo in next year’s live-action ‘Spider-Man: Far From Home’, which was shot down. Perhaps the wires got crossed and insiders misunderstood that there had been hopes to use Strange in ‘Into the Spider-Verse’ and not ‘Far From Home’.
Minus Doctor Strange, ‘Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse’ opens this weekend on December 14.
Source: Den of Geek
