It’s been more than two months since word leaked that Marvel would replace Scott Derrickson as the director of Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness with Sam Raimi, who previously made the original three Spider-Man films, which only helped take superhero movies to a whole new level of popularity (not to mention profitability) in Hollywood. No big whoop.

Since then, there’s been a global pandemic, and the shutdown of most of the film industry. Marvel still hasn’t confirmed the rumor one way or another — although even Scott Derrickson said Raimi was a great choice to direct the movie — but now Raimi has talked about the film publicly for the first time. In an interview about the Quibi series 50 States of Fright with ComingSoon.net, Raimi mentioned the film as part of a conversation about the reference to Doctor Strange in his Spider-Man 2.

I loved Doctor Strange as a kid, but he was always after Spider-Man and Batman for me, he was probably at number five for me of great comic book characters ... He was so original, but when we had that moment in Spider-Man 2 I had no idea that we would ever be making a Doctor Strange movie, so it was really funny to me that coincidentally that line was in the movie. I gotta say I wish we had the foresight to know that I was going to be involved in the project.

He never says he’s directing the movie specifically, but he does say he’s involved with the project, which is definitely not nothing. Marvel’s movies are all produced by its in-house team, so it would be very unusual for them to bring Raimi in to produce the film for another filmmaker — although that is theoretically possible.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness is scheduled for release on November 5, 2021. If Raimi’s at the helm there’s no question; it’s our most anticipated movie in Phase Four of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

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