Scott Derrickson announced on Twitter today that he had bowed out as director of Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness. “Marvel and I have mutually agreed to part ways,” he wrote. “I am thankful for our collaboration and will remain on as EP.” In the Multiverse of Madness is expected to see Strange team up with Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) as they do some spooky-spooky magic. Just how spooky is rumored to be at least one of the points of contention between Marvel and Derrickson. Fans on Twitter attributed Derrickson’s exit to Feige’s recent insistence that Doctor Strange 2 wouldn’t be a horror movie. At SDCC, Derrickson hinted that In the Multiverse of Madness would be a straight-up horror movie, something that Feige walked back in a December 2019 Q&A. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a horror film,” Feige told a NYFA audience, “but it is, as Scott Derrickson, our director, has pitched it, it’ll be a big MCU film with scary sequences in it.” Which begs the question: what will the MCU’s first horror movie be if the director that pitched it is out? According to Variety, Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness is still set to begin production in May.
