The Stephen Strange depicter is 'blown away' by the sacrifices that the crew members of 'Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness' made during the filming.
- Sep 13, 2021
AceShowbiz - Benedict Cumberbatch will always be indebted to the cast and crew of the "Doctor Strange" sequel for the sacrifices they made while making the movie during the COVID pandemic.
Unlike production on so many other blockbusters, nothing could stop the Marvel juggernaut and Cumberbatch is proud of the fact everyone got through filming without a real COVID positive, which would have brought the shoot to a grinding halt.
"I lost count of how many lockdowns we actually filmed through," he tells The Hollywood Reporter. "With this government-approved gold standard testing and tracing and temperature taking... it worked, and 500-plus crew came back after Christmas, and there was not one single positive test."
"We never stopped it. I got taken off, because of someone near me getting a false positive. But that was it. People made such sacrifices. Some of their children were going to school, and they weren't necessarily going to be sleeping in the same part of the house, or even in the same house. I was really, really blown away by that."
Benedict Cumberbatch is returning as Stephen Strange in the sequel which was supposed to reunite him with Scott Derrickson who helmed the first film. However, the director eventually decided to leave the upcoming "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" and Sam Raimi was brought in as a replacement.
According to screenwriter C. Robert Cargill who penned the first film but quit the second one as well, Derrickson left because of creative differences. Scheduling conflict also played a part in his departure as he couldn't imagine another director taking charge of his new horror passion project, "The Black Phone".
