The upcoming Doctor Strange sequel, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, is in Los Angeles for reshoots that one insider source described to the Hollywood Reporter as “significant” as the film will be shooting six days a week for the rest of 2021, with the filming reportedly being a mixture of additional photography along with reshoots.
Sam Raimi is still on board as the director for the reshoots and writer Michael Waldron (who was the head writer of Disney+’s Loki series) is also writing the additional material that is being filmed, but there appears to be a bit of a divide among insider sources over just how significant these reshoots are.
As noted, one source described them as being “significant,” but another source downplayed the significance, noting, “We’ve had bigger reshoots on other MCU movies” and another source concurred, explaining, “Even while in the middle of production, Marvel is scheduling you for more shooting,” as Marvel Studios productions are often so complicated that additional photography is almost inherently going to be part of the shooting plan.
However, a different source questioned the attempts to downplay the amount of new filming that is being done, noting, “They’re here until the end of the year. That’s like a whole other movie.”
An area of contention is whether the reshoots involve an attempt to work on the story of the film. Typically, when you hear stories of films doing reshoots, the first thing that fans and industry insiders alike think is, “They’re retooling the story,” even if that means something as simple as adding additional context to a scene or two (for instance, in Avengers: Endgame, the studio felt that the scene with all of the female heroes together felt a bit out of place, so additional scenes were shot to show the big group moment being set up by smaller groups of female heroes ahead of the big group sequence). Here, though, sources are downplaying the reshoots involving any retooling of the story.
Instead, it appears that the additional photography mostly comes down to making up earlier days lost to COVID delays or actor unavailability due to COVID travel difficulties involving the initial production of the film in England. These are the same production delays that led to Marvel Studios announcing that Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness would be pushed back from a March 2022 released to a May release (and all of the other 2022 Marvel Studios films pushed back one release date apiece).
Source: Hollywood Reporter
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