It’s no secret that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness went through a number of changes after Scott Derrickson left the film at the beginning of 2020. Marvel always planned to introduce more horror elements in the sequel. However, Derrickson had much different ideas about how to scare the living daylights out of audiences when he was still sitting in the director’s chair, including when it came to which villain to use.
Marvel ultimately chose to have Elizabeth Olsen’s Wanda Maximoff break bad in the sequel after Sam Raimi and Michael Waldron took over as director and screenwriter, respectively. However, Derrickson had his heart set on using Nightmare, a character with seemingly endless horror potential. As the ruler of his own “Dream Dimension,” Nightmare torments humans in their sleep by capturing their astral forms. But while speaking with Den of Geek, Waldron confirmed that once Marvel decided to explore the multiverse, they needed a new villain who better suited this concept.
“There was different stuff,” said Waldron. “I think it’s been reported that once upon a time, there was some talk of Nightmare and stuff like that. But when I came on board, it was a multiverse story. And so it was always about trying to figure out who that multiversal adversary was going to be.”
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In the comics, Nightmare wasn’t just any villain. He was the first villain that Stephen Strange ever faced when Stan Lee and Steve Ditko introduced him in Strange Tales #110 in 1963. His appearance in Multiverse of Madness was rumored as early as 2018, when original Doctor Strange co-writer C. Robert Cargill shared his hopes for the second installment in an interview with MovieWeb. Unfortunately, things didn’t pan out that way. But there’s always Doctor Strange 3…
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is now playing in theaters everywhere.
Would you like to see Nightmare show up in a future Doctor Strange installment? Who would you cast as the villain? Let us know in the comment section below!
Recommended Reading: Doctor Strange Vol. 1: The Way of the Weird
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