During his long and illustrious career, Sam Raimi has tried his hand at virtually every genre under the sun, and he’ll be putting those skills to good use when it comes to next month’s Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness.
Much like the upcoming Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, his last feature was blockbuster-sized Disney-backed fantasy Oz the Great and Powerful, while he’s obviously no stranger to superheroes having helmed Tobey Maguire’s Spider-Man trilogy and cult classic Darkman.
Of course, horror is what got Raimi’s foot in the door to begin with, and Kevin Feige teasing that Multiverse of Madness will make Evil Dead II fans very happy has generated all sorts of excitement. The Sorcerer Supreme’s second solo outing is already smashing pre-sale records, and the filmmaker hinted in an interview with Fandango that the impending adventure has plenty of familiar flavors.
“I think what [Kevin] meant, from my point of view, is that this film has a flavor of horror to it. I think when the original director, Scott Derrickson, and Kevin promoted the coming of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, they said that it was going to be the first Marvel superhero film that had an element of horror to it. I hope I’m not misquoting them. But even after Scott left the picture due to creative differences, that was still the mandate – to make the first Marvel film that had an element of horror. So, I kept true to their original statements.”
While we shouldn’t be expecting blood, guts, and gore to make an impact in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, it certainly sounds as though there may be a jump scare or two lurking in the shadows, which would be fairly uncharted territory for the MCU in and of itself.