Kevin Feige Confirms ‘Doctor Strange’ For Phase 3 Of The Marvel Cinematic Universe
Phase Two of Marvel’s Cinematic Unvierse gets underway this spring withIron Man 3, but Marvel Studios didn’t get where it was by looking only at the short term. SoKevin Feigeis already looking to Phase Three, which will kick off afterThe Avengers 2is released in 2015. The only film confirmed so far for that next step has beenEdgar Wright’sAnt-Man, but Feige revealed in a recent interview that aDoctor Strangefilm would “definitely” also be part of it. Read his comments about both films after the jump.
Ant-Man is definitely part of Phase Three. Like Iron Man 3, it’s certainly set in the Marvel Universe, but it’s also through the lens of Edgar Wright — which is the only reason we’re making the movie. […] It’s very much an Ant-Man origin movie from the perspective of Edgar Wright and his co-writerJoe Cornish. It will of course be firmly planted in the MCU, but a different corner than we’ve seen before.
While Phase One culminated in the formation of theAvengers, and Phase Two will lead up to theAvengerssequel, Phase Three seems prepared to go in some new directions.
So much of the stories we’re telling [right now] is about the core Avengers characters we’ve now met, and they’ll be evolving in big, surprising ways, in Cap’s next movie and Thor’s next movie and of course in Iron Man 3, as we get them all into the next Avengers film. Beyond that… Ant-Man is the only one officially announced, but you probably don’t have to look too far to guess at the next list of characters we’re toying with and beginning to develop.
And that, Feige confirmed, includesDoctor Strange.
Doctor Strange, which I’ve been talking about for years, is definitely one of them. He’s a great, original character, and he checks the box off this criteria that I have: he’s totally different from anything else we have, just like Guardians of the Galaxy. He’s totally different from anything we’ve done before, as is Ant-Man, which keeps us excited.
Rumors of a movie about the character have been circulating for several years, and last we heardin 2011, Feige saidDoctor Strangewould probably get going “sooner rather than later. There still doesn’t seem to be anything solid in place right now, but Feige seems eager to change that in the near(ish) future.
