Marvel Picks 'Conan' Writers for 'Doctor Strange'

Not even a day after it was suggested that Marvel and Disney might go the short film route to introduce less familiar comic book stars to mainstream audiences, Marvel Studios has grabbed Thomas Dean Donnelly and Joshua Oppenheimer to write Doctor Strange, which would actually be the quintessential project to develop as a short film first.

Don't get me wrong, the Doc is a great character. But so's Punisher, and look how that turned out. The idea behind the short films would be a hook-baiting, and if audiences bite, you make a feature film. I'm just not confident moviegoers will really go for it. It's a bit nebulous, what with its excursion to mountaintops to learn psychic powers, and hell, psychic powers. That's not exactly a ticket seller. As Deadline points out, "His mind is his weapon, rather than the brute force that distinguish most memorable Marvel heroes." Exactly.

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Marvel Might Get 'Strange'

There have been so many comic book movies coming down the chute that we were bound to miss one major one sooner or later. And it wasn't even so much that we missed, but rather that we weren't particularly moved by the news one way or the other so we waited for a slow(er) news day.

Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige is "very, very interested in" the opportunity to make a Dr. Strange movie. He told MTV, "I’d say in the next year, year and a half, as we start putting together our film slate for 2012 and 2013, I would not be shocked if we saw Dr. Strange on those lists. Continued Feige, "I love the idea of taping into the magical realm of the Marvel Universe, which is fairly significant and hasn’t yet seen life on screen." The good doctor is Marvel's reigning sorcerer dude - a mystic - which isn't even close to the sort of thing the company is putting on screen these days. So a Dr. Strange movie would definitely be something different. There are two ways of looking at this. If you're a huge fan, you're probably, thrilled, relieved, and excited to hear that Marvel may go down this road. The flip side is that although Marvel has a pretty good success rate, would this movie be in the Punisher range or X-Men range? Just what do they want this movie to do?

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