‘Doctor Strange 2’ Writer on the Illuminati Lineup, Making a Marvel Horror Movie and That Minotaur

thewrap.com:

“Doctor Strange 2” screenwriter Michael Waldron knows a thing or two about the multiverse. He first burst onto the scene as a writer on the beloved animated series “Rick and Morty” and was in line to become the show’s new showrunner, that is until Marvel Studios came calling asking if he wanted to head up a live-action TV show about Tom Hiddleston’s trickster villain Loki.It was while working on the Disney+ series “Loki” that Waldron was offered the opportunity to take a crack at a few different things all in one project: Marvel’s first horror movie, a Sam Raimi movie and a “Doctor Strange” sequel.

He was enlisted by Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige to tackle screenwriting duties on “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” after the departure of original director Scott Derrickson, and as it turns out, there were only a few structural pillars in place on which Waldron built the storyline.“Really what was in place is that it was a multiverse movie with Doctor Strange and that Wanda was going to be in it, and then we’re going to be introducing American Chavez,” Waldron told TheWrap during a recent interview.

When the pandemic hit, suddenly Waldron and director Sam Raimi had even more time to “start from scratch” and figure out what they wanted this movie to be.They wanted it to be a horror film, and Waldron says they got little pushback from the higher-ups at Disney for the film’s more terrifying sequences, which allowed “Evil Dead” director Sam Raimi to do his thing.“There were no guardrails,” Waldron said. “It was it was ‘go go go’ full-Sam.

If anything, it was Sam being cautious of his own guardrails, because Sam didn’t want to come in and just do the horror stuff just for the hell of it.