How Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Delay Changed No Way Home
Spider-Man: No Way Home is out in theaters now and so far, things have gone wonderfully well for the film, being loved by fans and critics both, and has already made more money than any Sony Pictures film has ever put out. The process wasn’t really easy though, and one of the problems was baked into the nature of MCU’s shared universe: Doctor Strange, who plays a vital role in Spider-Man: No Way Home, already had a sequel underway, which was slated to come out before the Spider-Man movie and cover a lot of the thematic ground. Obviously, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness isn’t out yet, so how did that impact the release of Spider-Man?
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness Delay Changed Spider-Man: No Way Home
Well, it seems like there was some rewriting that was deemed necessary, but it was quite easier than you might think to adjust the overall expectations. This comes via writers Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers, who told Variety that they essentially just had to account for Doctor Strange’s lack of knowledge when they worked on the new movie.
“We were actually working off of things that were happening in Doctor Strange 2, and trying to incorporate them into our script,” McKenna said. “When we started writing, [Strange] knows firsthand the dangers of screwing with these things. Then we changed it so he was a person who doesn’t know that much about the multiverse. But that makes it even more frightening, to start fooling around with these things, because it’s the fear of the unknown. Either way, he was the voice of reason going, ‘You don’t mess with the fate of an individual’ — and Peter Parker being naive enough to go, ‘Why not? Why can’t we save these people?'”
Of course, taking the other route — and acknowledging that Doctor Strange needs to understand way more about the multiverse now — which might explain a few of the reshoots that Multiverse of Madness went through.
Spider-Man: No Way Home is directed by Jon Watts, and the film closes out his trilogy of the MCU Spider-Man Homecoming movies. The film sees Tom Holland as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, with Jacob Batalon as Ned and Zendaya as MJ. The movie also has various returning Spider-Man villains which include Willem Dafoe as Green Goblin, Jamie Foxx as Electro, and Alfred Molina as Doctor Octopus.
In No Way Home, with Spider-Man’s identity finally revealed, our neighborhood web-slinger is unmasked and is no longer able to separate his normal life from the high stakes of being a superhero. When Peter seeks help from Doctor Strange, the stakes become more dangerous, forcing him to discover what it truly means to be the hero, Spider-Man.
Starring Tom Holland, Jacob Batalon, Zendaya, Jamie Foxx, Marisa Tomei, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Alfred Molina, Sony, and Marvel Studios’ No Way Home is in theaters now.
